DMN | BPM Tips

BPM Skills in 2026 – Hot or Not

Zbigniew — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:08:49 +0000

It’s time for a new post from the BPM Skills series with many thought-provoking answers from BPM experts (and not only)!

What to expect in 2026? Many companies are investing heavily in AI. New models are becoming increasingly powerful and are outperforming humans on many benchmarks. AI can be used to build agents and power humanoid robots, which could dramatically change how work is done.

On the other hand, not all AI initiatives have been successful (to put it mildly). Add to this changes in global supply chains and greater unpredictability in the business environment, and it feels like “interesting times,” to borrow the phrase.

How will these changes affect the role of BPM, and what do BPM practitioners need to do to stay relevant?

Check out the thought-provoking answers for the usual set of questions from 20+ BPM experts plus few extras: answers from a perspective of a Business Analyst and advice for organization leaders.

As always, you can either read everything or use the navigation below. Enjoy!
Wil van der Aalst
Tony Benedict
Lloyd Dugan
Scott Francis
Ian Gotts
Paul Holmes-Higgin and Joram Barrez
Caspar Jans
Mathias Kirchmer
Mirko Kloppenburg
Harald Kühn
Amy Van Looy
Madison Lundquist
Jan Mendling
Nathaniel Palmer
Brian Reale
Adrian Reed
Björn Richerzhagen
Pedro Robledo
Michael Rosemann
Serge Schiltz
Jim Sinur
Roger Tregear
Roland Woldt

Which BPM skills will be hot in 2026

Now, let’s dive into the answers.

Prof. Wil van der Aalst

Prof.dr.ir. Wil van der Aalst is a full professor at RWTH Aachen University, leading the Process and Data Science (PADS) group. He is also the Chief Scientist at Celonis and part-time affiliated with the Fraunhofer FIT. Currently, he is also deputy CEO of the Internet of Production (IoP) Cluster of Excellence and co-director of the RWTH Center for Artificial Intelligence. His research interests include process mining, data science, process intelligence, business process management, workflow automation, Petri nets, process modeling, and simulation. Many of his papers are highly cited (he is one of the most-cited computer scientists in the world and has an H-index of 188 according to Google Scholar with over 169,000 citations), and his ideas have influenced researchers, software developers, and standardization committees working on process support. According to Research.com, he is the highest-ranked computer scientist in Germany and ranked 8th worldwide (ranking 2025). He previously served on the advisory boards of several organizations, including Fluxicon, Celonis, ProcessGold/UiPath, and aiConomix/Automaited. Van der Aalst received honorary degrees from the Moscow Higher School of Economics (Prof. h.c.), Tsinghua University, and Hasselt University (Dr. h.c.). He is also an IFIP Fellow, IEEE Fellow, ACM Fellow, and an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, the Academy of Europe, the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts, and the German Academy of Science and Engineering. In 2018, he was awarded an Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship.

WWW: http://www.vdaalst.com
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Twitter: @wvdaalst

How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

AI is dramatically accelerating digital work, but it also exposes a long-standing weakness: organizations often lack a reliable, real-time understanding of how their processes actually function.

Generative, predictive, and prescriptive AI bring powerful capabilities, but only if they are connected to operational reality. AI needs process context, structured event data, and end-to-end visibility. Without these, AI will make processes faster, but not necessarily better. We risk accelerating inefficiencies, fragmenting responsibilities, or automating tasks that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

The most important shift is conceptual: moving from reactive process management, focused on dashboards and after-the-fact reports, to proactive and even autonomous operational steering. This shift requires:

object-centric event data covering many interconnected processes,

continuous monitoring rather than one-time analysis

AI assistance that works on process models (not only text), and

automated predictions and recommendations grounded in data semantics.

When processes become digitally transparent across objects, systems, and departments, AI can be used responsibly to suggest interventions, prevent bottlenecks, and optimize operations holistically. But if AI is used locally, optimizing individual tasks or documents in isolation, it can inflate work, obscure structures, and overwhelm people.

Ultimately, the organizations that will benefit from AI are those that combine automation with process awareness and operational grounding.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

A practitioner in 2026 will require a combination of process expertise, data fluency, and responsible AI thinking. The following dimensions will matter most:

Skills and techniques

working with object-centric event data and multi-object process views

process-aware predictive and prescriptive analytics

data extraction, transformation, and semantic modeling

real-time monitoring and operational process control

integrating AI/LLM components into structured process contexts

reference model use and domain-specific process standardization

optimization, simulation, and scenario evaluation

Behaviors and attitudes

evidence-based reasoning rooted in actual event traces

critical assessment of automation proposals

resistance to local sub-optimization

interdisciplinary communication skills (IT, business, data science)

comfort with hybrid intelligence – orchestrating humans + AI systems

attention to unintended process consequences

The practitioner needs curiosity, scepticism toward purely technical promises, and confidence in working with high-dimensional process data across systems.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

I’m currently working on a new version of the process mining book. This will appear in 2026 (published again by Springer).

Moreover, I recommend reflecting on our recent BISE editorial “Process Mindlessness: When we Lose Sight of What AI is Supposed to Improve”. Bus Inf Syst Eng 67, 771–775 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-025-00972-0. Here, we discuss three potential problems that arise when applying AI naively. When applied without process awareness, AI may unintentionally worsen operational processes rather than improve them. Three effects illustrate how the misuse of AI can undermine process performance and transparency.

A short summary:
1. Bloating: inflating process artifacts rather than streamlining work.
Generative AI makes it effortless to produce text, reports, tickets, emails, and documentation. Instead of clarifying process steps, AI can flood a process with additional artifacts, status updates, autogenerated logs, long explanations, masking the true flow of work. The result is process noise: more events and documents without added value.

2. Blurring: dissolving precise process information into ambiguous text.
Organizations maintain structured data representing objects, lifecycle transitions, and constraints. When AI converts such structured information into free-form text to generate recommendations or actions, semantics are blurred. Decision logic becomes implicit and probabilistic rather than explicit and verifiable. Blurring erodes the “single source of truth” required for process intelligence.

3. Blasting: scaling local automation without process constraints.
AI systems can act rapidly and at scale, generating messages, tasks, or transactions far faster than human agents. When such actions are not governed by process models, workloads shift downstream, overwhelming teams and breaking throughput assumptions. Traditional capacity constraints, once natural brakes, vanish, and without monitoring, the process destabilizes.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Some established skills are losing relevance, and some emerging skills are still hyped because they lack grounding in operational reality.

Declining relevance

ability to generate text, reports, and PowerPoint presentations,

case-centric process thinking as the dominant process lens,

manual KPI dashboarding detached from the underlying event data,

modeling-first approaches without factual logs, and

single-task automation without systemic process awareness.

Not practically applicable yet or overhyped

autonomous AI process agents without human oversight or auditability,

workflows delegated entirely to generative models without grounding,

AI that converts structured process data into text only to re-interpret that text,

unbounded automation that scales communications and actions without constraints, and

simplistic claims that AI eliminates the need for process understanding.

These trends tend to ignore unintended consequences such as bloating, blurring of semantics, and blasting effects that overload process participants.

AI offers unprecedented opportunities for process excellence, but only when it is grounded in factual event data, connected across objects, and aligned with process goals. The skills that matter are those that combine process science, data science, and responsible automation, while guarding against naive forms of AI adoption that accelerate fragmentation rather than improvement. If you automate nonsense, you just get automated nonsense (faster).

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Tony Benedict

Tony Benedict is a Partner with Omicron Partners, LLC, a strategy advisory firm. He is a senior level operations executive best known for transforming organizations, improving operational excellence and profitability. Most recently, he served as Interim Vice President of Operations for Rising Pharma, managing all phases of complex $200M post-merger integration of 2 acquired companies (36 CMOs, 2 3PLs) within expedited timeframe, while concurrently launching a state-of-the-art pharma distribution center. Consolidated 3 ERP systems into a single SAP instance within 6 months. Benedict previously worked at HonorHealth as Vice President, Procurement and Supply Chain where he was responsible for over $600M in spend management. One of his accomplishments was in the restructuring of the procurement and supply chain organizations post-merger within 12 months and consolidating two ERP systems within 18 months while implementing $60M in cost reduction initiatives. Previously, he was Chief Information Officer, Vice President of Supply Chain for Tenet, and Vice President, Supply Chain, Vanguard Health Systems at Abrazo Community Health Network in Arizona.
He is currently serving as President and Director, Board of Directors for the Association of Business Process Management Professionals International and is a co-author of the Business Process Management Common Body of Knowledge versions 2, 3 and the recently released version 4.
WWW: http://www.abpmp.org
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How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

The failure rate for AI projects to date has been over 70%. Companies have learned that injecting a new technology into your business shouldn’t be the primary strategy, rather that AI should augment business strategy. The challenge will be for more selectivity and prioritization for where the investments in AI should be made. The larger the company, especially multi-nationals, the more complexity, making AI models larger and implementations extremely difficult. I believe that successful companies will start where they have thoroughly documented their processes. The logical areas would be customer and supplier facing processes with customer facing taking priority given the impact on revenue. Companies can achieve quick wins within these two areas while they concurrently work on the major cross functional processes that touch the customers and suppliers to fully streamline and optimize internal operational efficiency.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

Building algorithms and language models will largely be left to technical analysts and developer types who are working on smaller scope projects. There is a tremendous need for a Business Architect Strategist to oversee enterprise level transformational efforts. The competency and skills required for practitioners will focus on greater depth and breath of business architecture strategy, integration and governance. The full list of competency areas are Strategy, Operations, Enterprise Performance Management, Human Dynamics, Enterprise Modeling, and Enterprise Governance inclusive of all the skills within each competency area. A complete competency matrix will be available at TheEssentialBusinessArchitect.org or at ABPMP.org

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

The BPM CBOK is a good start for those Director level practitioners who want the foundation for BPM. The best training is “on-the-job” training where the practitioner actually learns by doing. Every transformation is different and the diversity of experience will be the best teacher. Make every effort to increase the depth and breadth of your project experience while increasing scope to the enterprise level. If you do the same project work and the same scope then you’re not growing as you should in this profession. Find a very senior practitioner who can mentor you. Enterprise Governance will be more important now and in the future. Also, The Business Architect Consortium will be publishing “The Essential Skills of the Business Architect” in mid to late January 2026 which will outline what competencies and skills are needed for enterprise level transformation. Find our more at TheEssentialBusinessArchitect.org or at ABPMP.org

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

The BPM profession is not a “throw away” profession where certain skills are not longer relevant or applicable It’s always a question of what skills to use and why/when. As mentioned in the previous question, What is becoming more important is a greater depth and breadth of certain skills, many of which are non-technical and Business in nature. Competencies like strategy, systems thinking, operational integration, governance, etc.

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Lloyd Dugan

Lloyd Dugan is a widely recognized thought leader in the development and use of leading modeling languages, methodologies, and tools, covering from the level of EA and BA down through BPM, Case Management, and SOA. He specializes in the use of standard languages for describing business processes, systems, and services, particularly BPMN, CMMN, and DMN from the OMG. He has developed and delivered BPMN 2.0 training to the U.S. Department of Defense and large consultancies. He has nearly 40 years of experience with public and private sector clients, and has an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He is a past member of the Workflow Management Coalition and its BPSim Working Group that produced the process simulation standard, and also a past member of the OMG’s BPMN Model Interchange Working Group (MIWG). He is a Contributing Member (author) and Collaboration Team Member for the BA Meta Modeling and BPM-BA Alignment Groups of the Business Architecture Guild. He represents the Guild on the OMG Task Force for the BA Core Metamodel (BACM) standard. He is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences on BPM, BPMN, Case Management, Decision Management, SOA, and BA. He is a published author or co-author on BPM, BPMN, and BA. He led the effort to develop a new OMG certification for integrating BPMN, DMN, and CMMN, known as BPM+. He serves as the Chief Architect for Serco, NA, on its CMS Eligibility Support Program, which provides back-office processing of applications to access the Federal Health Care Exchange created under the Affordable Care Act, and where he has led award-winning efforts to build intelligent document processing, dynamic work assignment queuing, RPA for case management, use of AI/ML, process mining, and migration of all Program elements to the AWS Cloud. He still delivers BPM-related training, and when asked also provides client advisory services on BPM-related matters/technologies.

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How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

It is truly swimming against the tide when it comes to attempting to convince folks to NOT think about AI as anything other than a monolithic black box straight out of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. In other words, there is not a simple, one-size-fits-all answer to this question, but rather specific answers that support distinct and identifiable use cases.

For example, AI technologies and the models that power them are now sufficiently capable of doing time-saving and productivity-enhancing activities for the analyst such that one can vibe-review/engineer models and code constructs, create documentation and design artifacts, summarize findings, etc. via well-targeted prompting. This saves on the effort to do the leg-work previously needed, but I think this is first-cut stuff that still warrants a practiced eye’s review…at least for a while longer. However, this says only so much about using such things as part of business process automation.

Regarding those use cases, AI technologies and the models that power them are increasingly capable of automating the execution of more complex tasks with more reliability, such that human-in-the-loop (HITL) is becoming more of a bug than a feature. New design patterns have emerged, such as Agentic AI, where the probabilistic logic of AI and deterministic decision logic combine into adaptive behavior by systems. The advent of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-based systems is making for more domain-specific results with less likelihood of hallucination, and now with the underlying knowledge bases of the business better understood and implemented. This helps the business to decide between pre-trained and to-be-trained models for risk/reward payoff.

Some use cases have always been there, but AI now provides stronger and more available tools to address them. An example of this is fraud detection, which is not a new need but is now better enabled via the latest AI. Of course, this is all part of the escalation where AI feeds both fraudsters and fraud-detectors in a never-ending race.

As with any impactful IT, all of this needs to be under some kind of governance, and there is substantial literature out there on this topic. As usual, the US is lagging behind Europe in tackling this because of pervasive and misguided laissez-faire takes on how best to advance the development of AI. It is not rocket science nor regulatory overreach to apply common sense requirements to the use of AI. It is simply sound thinking.

So, in conclusion, AI is part of the IT stack, fitting in where it can provide the best value. Sounds like any other IT that’s come along over the years. And like any other IT, we must come to terms with its use, and align management practices accordingly.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

The usual things are still true – namely: operational modeling and simulation, process and data analysis, an abiding intellectual curiosity about how to improve how things work, etc. – but the value gap between what the experienced practitioner can provide vs. what the noobie can provide is continuing to shrink as generative AI tools mature. However, greater reliance on such tools comes at the cost of losing the deep understanding that powers the discipline of BPM, widening the divide between those that simply produce artifacts for base level consumption by others and those that produce constructs that are intended to execute in production as automated processes.

One way to navigate the tensions created between these two Scylla-and-Charybdis forces is to be able to exploit domain-specific knowledge and to professionalize the deep understanding of BPM as a discipline – at least as long as there is value-add to practical experiences over AI “smarts”. The deep understanding needed is built around operational modeling, such as with BPM+ (BPMN/DMN/CMMN) and Value Stream Modeling (Value-generation), and knowing how best to capture the behaviors of AI in such models, making its role explicit rather than tacit. For example, work out how best to represent AI-enabled moments in an operational model that support automation without confusing (too much) business stakeholders. This can be done and taught.

Better understanding of the domain can come through use of knowledge graphs about the business, which AI and associated models should be built around. This should all be seen as just another thing about AI that BPM practitioners can get smarter about.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

I have found this book a great primer for AI/ML, but there are plenty of books to read: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/knowledge-graphs-mayank-kejriwal/1137268183.

I have found this book to be a great primer on governance, but other books exist: https://www.amazon.com/AI-Algorithms-Mastering-Ethical-Compliance/dp/1634624564.

For operational modeling with BPMN, there is an abundance of options available that a simple Internet search will reveal (including one for the author of this very website). Fewer, if just focused on DMN, but that continues to be a hot one, so also too many to cite. Few for CMMN, but I still have hopes that that turns around. BPM+ is about the unification/integration across all three, and there are some options, and even an integrative exam that I and others helped craft. Advanced Value Stream Modeling remains criminally underserved, but I’m hoping to turn that around in the future too.

Regarding AI/ML, there is all sorts of material out there. AWS, whose Bedrock set of services present a strong foundation (but not for the noobies) in AI/ML, has a set of training options, and given the cloud vendors investment here should be considered: https://aws.amazon.com/ai/learn/.

For a more contextual and philosophical take, I’ll plug something from an early source of BPM inspiration for me, Tom Koulopoulos, that he recently started (though I have yet to take) and a book from him and my long-time friend, mentor, boss, and collaborator Nathaniel Palmer: The Future of AI: Humanity’s Next Frontier and https://www.amazon.com/Gigatrends-Forces-Changing-Future-Billions/dp/1637589808.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

AI is rendering the background technical architecture for accessing data and application logic increasingly like a utility that one knows is there but doesn’t have to know too much about to use – think about how you don’t need to understand too much about electricity to use it in one’s household. As an example of this, note that one of the things that BPM technologies still have a lot to say about is service orchestration, but model context protocol (MCP) is moving to claim that space.

Deep technical knowledge may be receding in importance, but deep understanding of how things work remains key. I hope that strong – and especially domain-specific – understanding of how things work and can be improved for processes remains just as vital as it has for decades. I see in this a parallel with data science, which is more about understanding the meaning of data and the patterns therein than about where it resides and how to access it.

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Scott Francis

Scott Francis is President of Westslope Advisors, providing advisory and board services to growing and scaling firms and sharing what he’s learned from 30 years in Technology. Scott formerly led BP3 Global, Inc, and held senior roles at Lombardi Software and Trilogy Software. You can find his writings on Substack and Medium.

WWW: https://sfrancisatx.substack.com/
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How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

A major impact of AI has been to slow budget spend on everything that isn’t “AI”. I highly recommend rebranding and reframing your process work as critical AI work. Organizations that try to manage and run their processes with AI today will have serious issues with hallucinations and inconsistencies, which are unacceptable for businesses. We do not expect calculators to be right 85% of the time. They are right 100% of the time, or we don’t use them. Generative AI asks us to lower our standards for what constitutes successful automation – but that error rate will lead to either bad business outcomes, or inordinate spending on “fixing” the AI results. Neither is acceptable.

What does work, is letting your processes manage AI. You use AI in the context of a business process with all of its inputs, outputs, and process flow context. You put AI algorithms into processes the same way. This gives you the scaffolding to make AI a productive and useful part of the systems that participate in your processes. AI is not a substitute for understanding your business processes and operational processes. AI is not a substitute for designing them, though you may well consult with AI tools on how to design them, and how to improve them.

Harking back to BPM the third wave: first, there’s the process instance and how you execute it (think, a single order). Second, there’s another dimension that is the collection of all the process instances of that process, and how they are managed collectively (think, all orders being processed). Third, there’s the dimension that is evaluating and improving the process definition for the future, based on what you are learning from the work that is happening now and in the past. AI can play a role in each.

In the first, it is subsidiary to the process instance and should be controlled by the process definition. In the second, AI can help identify problematic instances (orders for example), or highlight trends, or offer advice in response to queries from a manager for example, with respect to load management or likely risk. In the third, AI can provide advice on improving the process definition for the future based on past results.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

The traditional skills, techniques, behaviors and attitudes will continue to provide value in 2026. In fact, if you exhibit those values, you may find yourself an increasingly rare commodity. My advice is to continue to focus on designing for humans in the business – AI and process, when done right, greatly improve the human experience and customer experience in a business.

Another skill that is incredibly important in today’s world: the ability to estimate when an AI-focused project or program will complete. As an industry, many tech executives and IT executives have lost the ability to estimate when AI is involved, because it doesn’t follow the old rules for estimation in software. I’ wrote a whole post about this here: https://sfrancisatx.substack.com/p/we-are-terrible-at-estimating-progress Because I think this is a real challenge to many companies and executives, I recommend really working on how to estimate and when a good estimate is not possible. It’s a long read, but hopefully worth it.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

I can recommend two great resources:
1. Enterprise Process Orchestration – this is the book I wish I had written, and that I would recommend to every single BPM practitioner, and every single person who cares about process orchestration. https://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-Process-Orchestration-Hands-Technology/dp/1394309678 – by Berndt Rücker and Leon Strauch.

2. Irresistible Change, by Phil Gilbert https://www.amazon.com/Irresistible-Change-Blueprint-Buy-Breakout/dp/1394367759/. One of the main reasons we do this work is because we are effecting change within large organizations with complex processes. Phil gives here the how-to on making change – at scale – irresistible. It’s an amazing read.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Vibe coding. You can vibe code one-off utilities and single use programs. But if you vibe code ATM Clearing transactions, bad things will happen. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use AI assistants for coding, validating code, understanding code. But don’t confuse vibe coding with professional software development, with production use in mind.

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Ian Gotts

Ian Gotts. Speaker : Analyst : Advisor

WWW: https://iangotts.medium.com
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Business Analysis 2026: Why Domain Expertise is Your New Superpower

TL;DR

By 2026, we’ll have crossed the Carbon-Silicon Divide and the Business Analyst role will have bifurcated. Artificial Intelligence will automate the “mechanics” of analysis—mapping, documentation, and basic requirements gathering. This leaves the human BA with a binary choice: become a deep domain expert who directs the AI, or face irrelevance.

The rise of “vibe coding” and autonomous agents means building solutions is faster than ever. But speed without direction is just chaos accelerated. The future belongs to those who can provide the precise context, nuance, and industry expertise that AI lacks. That is the critical thinking that great Business Analysts provide, in teh context of the deep domain expertise.

Crossing the Carbon-Silicon Divide

For over two decades, the holy grail of Business Analysis was to capture a process and have the application generate automatically. We tried utilizing standards like UML and BPMN, but they largely failed for one reason: we were forced to describe business in terms computers understood—”silicon”. To make the logic executable, the resulting diagrams had to be so dense, rigid, and complex that often only their creators could decipher them .

AI has finally shattered that barrier. We no longer need to learn the syntax of the machine; the machine has learned ours. We can now describe business needs in natural language—”carbon”—and trust the AI to handle the translation into code and logic. As noted in my Forbes article “Silicon Vs. Carbon: Finally, Computers Are Speaking Our Language“, this doesn’t absolve us of critical thinking; much like delegating to a skilled intern, we must still be specific and clear about what we want. But the friction is gone. We have finally crossed the carbon-silicon divide, moving from a world where we serve the syntax to one where the syntax serves us.

The “Vibe Coding” Trap

We are entering the era of “vibe coding,” where anyone with an idea can describe it in natural language, and an AI will generate the code. While many current examples are prototypes, the trajectory is undeniable. The barrier to building software is collapsing.

However, the determining factor in the quality of these apps is no longer coding skill—it is the quality of the description. In the old world, a human developer might push back if a specification didn’t make sense or lacked organizational context. An AI vibe coding platform will not. It will build exactly what you asked for, errors and all.

This shines a harsh spotlight on the quality of Business Analysis.

The stakes are higher: If you describe a flawed process, you get a flawed app instantly.

Requirements are critical: You must “bottom out” the specification. What are the specific business processes? What is the data model?

Architecture matters: If the app is destined for production, who is considering scaling, maintenance, and compliance?

As application generation becomes effortless, the rigor of the analysis becomes the only safety net.

Programming with English: The Rise of Agents

We are already managing a digital workforce. At Elements.cloud, we have deployed agents to support teams in every department. They have employee records, formal onboarding, and scheduled reviews. They aren’t replacing people; they are liberating them.

Take “Fin,” our support agent. Fin is now answering 90% of inbound customer questions accurately. For the 10% it cannot answer, it passes them to a human support team with a full analysis already complete. Furthermore, our internal “case to bug” agent has reduced resolution time from 23 days to 5, increasing documentation quality from 0.8/10 to 9/10.

But here is the catch: Agents are literal. An agent has limited common sense and zero organizational intuition. It will read a 200-page policy document in seconds and execute instructions precisely. If those instructions (your business processes) are loose, ambiguous, or rely on “tribal knowledge,” the agent will fail .

The ability to “agentify” an organization relies entirely on the quality of your process documentation .

Process as Code: You are essentially programming with natural language .

The Detail Gap: Humans cover up gaps in bad processes with workarounds. Agents do not.

Documentation: If your agents are unreliable, it is almost always a failure of business analysis, not the technology.

The Death of the Generalist

We have built a Business Analysis (BA) Agent. It is impressive. It can interview stakeholders, identify missing steps, suggest improvements, and draw the process diagram automatically . It leverages the collective knowledge of Large Language Models (LLMs) which have “read” about every industry on earth.

So, what is the future of the human Business Analyst if an agent can do the heavy lifting in a week?

The answer is deep domain expertise.

The “A” in AI stands for Augment. A BA Agent is only as good as the context it is fed. If you ask it to define a field service process for upstream oil and gas, it will give you a technically correct, generic answer. But it won’t know the specific compliance nuances of your geography, your company’s specific operating model, or the political landscape of your stakeholders.

The Generalist’s Risk: If you are a generalist BA who simply transcribes what people tell you into diagrams, you are at risk. An agent can do that faster and cheaper. When asked your ara of expertise, it cannot be “Oil and Gas”. THat is too broad. “Downstream Oil and Gas” whilst narrower is again is huge domain. “Filed Service for downstream Oil and Gas” is a tighter area, but still has a huge scope.

The Expert’s Opportunity: If you are a domain expert, AI makes you the smartest person in the room. You can use the agent to handle the drudgery—drafting, mapping, checking for consistency—allowing you to focus on high-value strategy and complex problem solving. So take time to assess your experience to pinpoint your area of expertise and work out how to deepen that.

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Paul Holmes-Higgin

Dr Paul Holmes-Higgin, Fellow and co-founder of Flowable. Previously, as co-founder and CPO of Alfresco. Paul brought Activiti to the fore of the company’s innovation. A long-time Open Source advocate, he believes it has an important role to play in making today’s innovation more widely available. His PhD and background in AI gives him a deep understanding of the opportunities and realities of Machine Learning. Paul sees innovation around the standard models of BPM as the best way to bring together his passions for human-centred software and intelligent automation in today’s highly dynamic business and social environment.

WWW: https://flowable.com
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Joram Barrez

Joram Barrez is a Business Process Management and open-source expert, working as a principal software architect at Flowable. With over fifteen years of real-world BPM experience, Joram is known for his contributions to the field, constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation and efficiency. He’s one of the founders of the Flowable open-source project and Activiti before that, and has worked on JBoss jBPM early on in his career. Throughout the years, Joram has worked with numerous global companies, helping them optimize their processes and drive digital transformation.

WWW: https://flowable.com
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How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

[PHH] Are there any other trends apart from generative AI? I think the “introducing AI with guardrails” trend in BPM is now dated, but what modern BPMs have always been doing is showing up as things get real with AI. That is, managing business processes that interact with external services, mixed with human interaction; all auditable and secure.

The automation focus is now far more on declarative, agentic behavior, rather than procedural flows for business solutions.

[JB] Agreed. I’m a big believer of declarative approaches. Instead of trying to map every possible path upfront, we can now describe the problem and let an AI agent determine the steps to reach a solution. In enterprise settings, though, it only really works with strong governance in place: clear boundaries, auditability, and explicit rules around what an agent is allowed to decide on its own.

That’s why I see context engineering as the real differentiator going forward. In many ways, this is not new to BPM. We’ve been doing it for years through processes, and even more through case management. The goal has always been the same: make sure the right information reaches the right person or system at the right time. Each interaction adds context, which then drives the next action, whether human or automated.

[PHH] One other trend is the build v. buy software selection decision changing to AI code-generated prototype solutions, before even thinking about a vendor. Liberal open source BPMs (Apache, MIT-licensed etc) are freely available libraries for AIs to exploit, but they can grow into full-strength enterprise platform use once the business solution has been proven.

[JB] Another way to look at this is to ask a simple question: what are the foundational building blocks for the next generation of intelligent automation? For me, processes, cases, workflows or whatever you name it (and the APIs that expose and interact with them) sit right at the center. They provide the structure AI agents need to operate effectively and safely inside an enterprise.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

[JB] Building on what I just said, declarative thinking will only become more important. At the same time, the fundamental skills that have always defined BPM practitioners remain crucial, arguably more so than ever. Making sure solutions meet data security standards, governance policies, and regulatory requirements is non-negotiable today. And with new players entering the field, that challenge is only getting tougher.

[PHH] I really think we should change the mindset, so that BPM means Business Problem Management, to avoid the easy oversimplification that everything is a sequential, procedural process. A business process is about getting an outcome from an initial situation. What happens in between is a blend of machine and human intelligence with repeatable best practice. BPMN, DMN and CMMN all have a role to play in this.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

[PHH] Get your hands dirty and try things out, because the technology is moving too fast for books or courses – even an online resource will be out of date at depth. Download the open source or trial versions of BPM platforms and use AI-generated BPM standard models to see how agentic solutions can work today. To learn CMMN through a book, Bruce Silver’s “CMMN Method and Style” is your best option.

[JB] Absolutely. We’re very much in an experimentation phase. Best practices are evolving so rapidly that what we write today can become outdated tomorrow. As you say, the most effective way to stay ahead is by actively experimenting with the capabilities and understanding what works in practice. On that note, I couldn’t agree more about CMMN: the evaluation-cycle approach in “case” management fits perfectly with agentic ways of working. It’s a natural match: structured flexibility that balances control with flexibility.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

[JB] One side-effect of generative AI is that people are reading less, relying on AI to summarize and extract key information quickly. When I started in BPM a long time ago, a big part of my work was process discovery: interviewing stakeholders, summarizing their intents, finding gaps to automate and sketching back-of-the-napkin diagrams. The essence of that work won’t disappear, but with today’s tools, how that information is gathered and processed is changing very fast.

Similarly, some technical skills are becoming less central. Early in my career, we crafted XML by hand; later, visual modeling made syntax less of a worry. Today, we can interact with models directly, applying changes or querying them via AI, without knowing every detail. The focus is shifting from mastering mechanics to orchestrating strategically and understanding how models drive real outcomes.

[PHH] Just don’t expect AI-generated BPM models to be production ready! I could be controversial and say not to spend time on RPA if you aren’t already committed to it: AI-generated code will do the same.

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Caspar Jans

Caspar is a seasoned BPM professional with 25 years of experience in various industries. From managing a center of excellence on BPM for a global manufacturing company, hosting a podcast on BPM and consulting large enterprises on the benefits of a process centric approach to being a Principal BPM Expert for Celonis, Caspar has been on both sides of the table on process management (and more). On top of that, Caspar is listed in the PEX Network Global Top 25 though leaders on Operational Excellence.

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How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

With the introduction of AI also came the realization that your business processes actually provide the necessary alignment and guard rails for AI to be successful within. Without this, AI tends to spin out of control. The developments on the AI front are going so fast that the usual governance concepts can’t keep up and in order to offset that, a proper process landscape (connected to roles, applications, input/outputs and more) is vital. So, there seems to be a revived interest in how to efficiently and effectively document processes, not just for the sake of documenting them, but for the sake of being able to also orchestrate and automate them (either via automation platforms or AI).

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

The BPM practitioner has to become much more allround compared to the last decade. Just being knowledgeable on how to model and govern processes will simply not be sufficient anymore. BPM practitioners will need at least basic understanding on topics like orchestration, automation, AI and maybe even the most important one: human psychology, because after all, if you want to implement successful change within an organization, you will have influence people rather than software or hardware. Being an avid communicator will help the BPM practitioner to more eloquently explain why having a governed and up to date process landscape is vital for all of the AI use cases.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

For the more general background on BPM I would suggest the youtube channel of Roger Tregear (the Australian BPM guru) or season 1 of the BPM360 podcast (explaining the 4 key success criteria for BPM implementations in great detail). Also the book on “influence” by Robert Cialdini is a recommendable book (for the human behavioral part).

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Given the emergence of AI assistants in BPM, the modeling skill has become less relevant (in terms of: you don’t need that many modelers anymore and their work emphasis changes a bit from creating to validating process documentation). The model to execute skill (so the ability to model a process and then ingest it straight into an execution engine) is emerging but not yet critical to master for now.

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Dr. Mathias Kirchmer

Dr. Kirchmer is an experienced practitioner and thought leader in the field of Business Process Management (BPM) and Digital Transformation. He is Managing Director of Scheer Americas, previously BPM-D US. He co-founded BPM-D, a consulting company focusing on performance improvements and appropriate digitalization by establishing and applying the discipline of BPM. Before he was Managing Director and Global Lead of BPM at Accenture, and CEO of the Americas and Japan of IDS Scheer, known for its process modelling software and process consulting.

Dr. Kirchmer has led numerous transformation and process improvement initiatives in various industries at clients around the world. He has published 11 books and over 150 articles. At the University of Pennsylvania and at Widener University he has served as affiliated faculty for over 20 years. He received a research and teaching fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

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WWW:https://www.scheer-americas.com/
Twitter: @mtki2006

How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

Business Process Management (BPM) has become the management discipline that moves strategy into people and technology-based execution, fast and reliably. It creates the transparency necessary to take fast well-informed decisions and implement the related actions effectively. This transparency is the foundation of success in the digital age. The discipline of BPM helps to align business and technology aspects towards the goals of an organization to create the expected value.

Most process improvement initiatives must leverage digital technologies to achieve the desired agility, flexibility, innovation and efficiency. Realizing the business potential of those digital technologies has become a key role of BPM, delivering process-led digital transformation. This includes the identification of the improvement opportunities through AI. The visibility BPM provides helps to identify systematically where AI helps to enhance the end-to-end performance of business processes.

With Agentic AI, the role of BPM continues to evolve. Intelligent agents create process instances more and more independently, with little to no human intervention. Therefore, BPM shifts its focus from the design of operational processes to defining their deliverables and performance levels. Related data requirements are crucial and need to be addressed through the BPM-Discipline. Governance and management process become increasingly more significant.

BPM provides the “process of process management” integrating and aligning process, data and AI governance to provide the necessary control and rapid adjustment of the highly automated business processes. BPM moves from addressing mainly the design and implementation of operational processes to delivering appropriate management and governance processes.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

BPM Practitioners need to focus increasingly on delivering process-led digital transformation through appropriate standardization, optimization and innovation of processes. They organize the required management and governance processes, integrating process, data and AI requirements through the definition of a company specific “process of process management”, realizing value and driving the ongoing transformation journey. Therefore, BPM Practitioners need to understand both the business aspects of processes and the effects of digital technologies that support these processes. BPM Practitioners need to know how to create and apply related assets, such as software-based process reference models.

Process standardization remains an important topic since it simplifies digital transformation and makes it more efficient. BPM Practitioners need to develop related skills, such as the definition of the right degree of abstraction and detail for a specific standardization initiative or the appropriate leverage of process reference models.

Not all processes are equal. BPM Practitioners need to identify the 10-15% high impact processes for sophisticated innovation and optimization initiatives. Commodity processes are improved by applying industry common practices to reach an average performance level. Sophisticated optimization doesn’t pay off here. BPM Practitioners need to be able to apply process impact and maturity assessments to achieve the required process segmentation.

The role in digital transformation requires the handling of related data aspects. Developing logical data models and simplifying those to enable nimble processes as well as supporting applications becomes an important skill. The design of appropriate data management processes becomes another important task.

The high degree of automation allows the collection of related data. This enables the use of “digital twins” to manage processes more effectively. BPM Practitioners help to develop and apply those digital twins.

The BPM-Discipline goes through a digital transformation itself. The integrated use of BPM tools, such as modelling, mining and automation tools, leveraging AI, becomes an important success factor. BPM Practitioners need to drive this transformation of BPM.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Specialized consulting and education organizations offer training and eLearning addressing those skills, such as Scheer with its academy and publications (www.scheer-americas.com). Industry organizations, like APQC (www.apqc.org), ABPMP (www.abpmp.org) or the BPM Institute (www.bpminstitute.org), provide related resources. Forward thinking universities and research organizations address related topics, for example the August-Wilhelm Scheer Institute for Digital Processes and Products (www.aws-institut.de), the Scheer School for Digital Sciences (Scheer School of Digital Sciences – Saarbrücken – Scheer School of Digital Sciences at Saarland University), Widener University with its master program for Digital Transformation (www.widener.edu) or the University of Pennsylvania (www.upenn.edu).

Here are some related readings that may help:
• Scheer, A.-W.: Digitale Industrie: Daten – Prozesse – Metaverse. New York, Berlin, e.a. 2025 (English version to follow in 2026).
• Scheer, A.-W.: The Composable Enterprise: Agile, Flexible and Innovative – A Gamechanger for Organizations, Digitalization and Business Software. 4th ed., New York, Berlin, e.a. 2023.
• Kirchmer, M., Havaligi, S.: Realizing the full Potential of AI Applications through Business Process Management. In: Shishkov B. (ed): Business Modeling and Software Design. BMSD 2025. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 559 (ISBN: 978-3-031-98032-9). Springer, 2025.
• Kirchmer, M.: Process-led Digital Transformation – Mastering the Journey towards the Composable Enterprise. In: Shishkov B. (ed): Business Modeling and Software Design. BMSD 2024. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 523 (ISBN: 978-3-031-64072-8). Springer, 2024.
• Wilson, H.J, Daugherty, P.R.: Generative AI – The Secret to Successful AI-driven Process Redesign. In: Harvard Business Review, January-February 2025.
• Kirchmer, M.: High Performance through Business Process Management – Strategy Execution in a Digital World. 3rd ed., New York, Berlin, e.a. 2017.
• Franz, P., Kirchmer, M.: Value-driven Business Process Management – The Value-Switch for Lasting Competitive Advantage. New York, 2012.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Traditional improvement approaches that do not address the alignment of business and information technology or do not leverage digital technologies as appropriate to enhance processes will no longer be successful. Every transformation is related to some degree of digital transformation.

General principles of process improvement as applied in approaches like Lean, Six Sigma or Kaizen remain true and useful. But to stay relevant they must be upgraded, leveraging modern digital process management capabilities, such as mining or modelling tools.

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Mirko Kloppenburg

Hi, I’m Mirko. I’m living in Hamburg, Germany, with my wife and our two daughters. For more than 20 years, I’ve been working in Business Process Management – starting in large, complex organizations and today helping companies build truly process-driven organizations.

I’m creator of the New Process approach and founder of NewProcessLab.com, where I combine BPM, New Work, and experience design into a human-centric approach to process management. My focus is on BPM as a leadership and management capability: creating clarity, enabling people, and turning strategy into action through processes.

I host the New Process Podcast, where I share real-world BPM experiences, frameworks, and conversations with practitioners from around the world.

WWW: NewProcessLab.com
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Twitter: @MirkoKBurg

How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

AI is fundamentally changing how work is executed – but not why work exists.

In many organizations, AI is currently introduced as a technology initiative. New models, agents, and tools promise efficiency and autonomy. At the same time, we see many AI initiatives struggling or failing because underlying processes are unclear, fragmented, or not owned by anyone.

This is where BPM becomes more important than ever.

In an increasingly unpredictable environment – with volatile supply chains, geopolitical shifts, and rapid technological change – organizations need orientation, clarity, and adaptability. BPM provides exactly that by making value creation explicit end-to-end, clarifying responsibilities, and creating a shared understanding of how work actually gets done.

AI will automate decisions, generate content, and execute tasks. But BPM must ensure that:
– processes are meaningful and aligned with strategy,
– humans remain accountable for outcomes,
– and AI is embedded intentionally into workflows, not layered on top of confusion.

I see BPM evolving from a discipline focused on optimization to a management capability that enables learning, resilience, and informed decision-making in an AI-enabled world.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

To stay relevant in 2026, BPM practitioners must shift from being process experts to becoming process enablers and sense-makers.

From my perspective, four capability areas matter most:

1. Strategic positioning of BPM: BPM practitioners must be able to connect purpose, strategy, and processes. This includes articulating why BPM matters, what impact it creates, and how it contributes to business strategy in times of uncertainty.

2. Implementing pragmatic BPM frameworks: Instead of heavyweight governance, organizations need lightweight, usable BPM frameworks that provide orientation without bureaucracy. This includes clear process architectures, meaningful communication, and well-defined roles such as Process Owners as real leadership roles.

3. Enabling people, not controlling them: The ability to inspire people for processes, facilitate dialogue, and build a process culture is becoming a core skill. BPM only creates value if people understand, accept, and actively shape their processes.

4. Applying AI with intention: BPM practitioners don’t need to become AI engineers. But they must understand where deterministic automation, GenAI, AI agents, or human decision-making are appropriate – and where they are not. The key skill is judgment, not tool mastery.

Underlying all of this is a mindset shift: from “designing processes” to continuously enabling organizations to learn and adapt through processes.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

I believe BPM skills are best developed where practice, reflection, and exchange come together.

Peer communities and practitioner exchange are extremely valuable, because they surface real-world challenges and patterns beyond theory. For example, New Process Pro is a free community where BPM practitioners share experiences, discuss frameworks, and reflect on what it really takes to build process-driven organizations.

Structured learning formats can help to create orientation, especially for practitioners who want to position BPM more strategically. A good starting point is a concise BPM roadmap that connects strategy, processes, and people – before diving into methods or tools.

Curated content such as podcasts, blogs, and BPM platforms helps to stay connected to the broader BPM discourse and emerging perspectives.

Most importantly, learning happens through application: facilitating workshops, coaching Process Owners, experimenting with BPM frameworks, and reflecting on what actually creates impact in a specific organizational context.

Examples mentioned above:
New Process Pro Community: https://www.newprocesslab.com/pro
BPM Roadmap Mini Course: https://www.newprocesslab.com/roadmap

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

No BPM skill is irrelevant per se – relevance always depends on purpose and context.

That said, I currently see a strong overemphasis on tools and technology compared to foundational capabilities.

Highly detailed process modeling, tool-driven BPM initiatives, or AI-first approaches often create activity without impact when organizations lack clarity about:
– their end-to-end processes,
– process responsibilities,
– and purpose.

Similarly, fully autonomous, self-optimizing process visions are still largely aspirational for most organizations. Without a strong process culture and clear accountability, they remain more hype than reality.

What is often underestimated – and still underdeveloped – are skills related to leadership, facilitation, sense-making, and cultural change. In 2026, these will differentiate BPM practitioners far more than technical specialization.

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Harald Kühn

Dr. Harald Kühn is a member of the management board of the BOC AG. He is responsible for the product management and the related strategic aspects of BOC’s ADONIS and ADOIT product portfolio. Dr. Harald Kühn works in the areas of BPM, EA, their integration and the usage of innovative technologies in these domains.
He is an author of over 20 publications about various aspects of BPM.

WWW: boc-group.com
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Twitter: @BOC_Group

How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

If you provide this question to the ChatBots of the big players (see question 3), you already get very good answers with various perspectives on the related impact. No need to repeat the answers here.

Independent of that, I personally see three concrete impacts:

In the near future, human work processes will be primarily influenced by AI-based technology for “knowledge-related tasks” (white-collar tasks) such as writing, analyzing, summarizing, researching, planning, programming, testing, conceptualizing, managing etc. For the next 3-5 years I do not see a major impact on “manual tasks” (blue-collar tasks) of human work processes such as repairing of physical things, construction, outdoor services, maintenance activities, nursing services etc. The latter might change with the upcoming wave of AI-based robotics.

In the domain of “knowledge-related tasks” I see intensive usage of AI-based technology within all kind of tasks. This leads to a distinctive productivity boost for “knowledge-related tasks”, but not a complete replacement of such tasks by AI. As a result, the nature of human work will continuously change from “do-ing” to “govern-ing”.

In the domain of “machine-based processes” or “automated processes” I see a clear trend to extend the automation domain from pre-defined or rule-based execution to agentic execution. The domain of agentic AI is still in an early maturity level, but the evolution speed rapidly accelerates (https://aaif.io/).

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

To be honest, actually I do not see big differences between 2025 and 2026 on this topic. But it might be even more important to focus on speed to deliver value and results quickly as just having an eye on costs and short-term profitability.

Continuous Learning: As the work environment, used technologies, practices, methodologies etc. are continuously changing, the learning process must do so as well. Continuous learning involves the persistent broadening of knowledge and abilities. Within the realm of workplace professional development, it focuses on acquiring new competencies and insights, as well as reinforcing previously acquired skills and knowledge.

Practical Engagement with AI-based Tools: To successfully integrate AI with its different flavors such as Machine Learning, GenAI, Agentic AI etc. into BPM, practitioners in 2026 must prioritize continuous learning. This includes formal training, up-to-date online courses, and participation in global industry events tailored to AI advancements. Hands-on experience remains vital – through pilot projects, close collaboration with technology teams, and practical applications such as designing contextualized prompts or applying domain-specific models. Particular emphasis should be placed on addressing modern challenges like information security, data privacy, and the ethical use of company data in conjunction with public GenAI and/or Agentic AI services. Furthermore, staying actively connected with the BPM and AI communities is critical. Engaging in professional forums, participating in discussions on cutting-edge case studies, and networking with experts will ensure practitioners remain informed about the latest trends, tools, and best practices shaping the field in 2026.

Use of Conceptual Modelling: The intensified use of multi-perspective conceptual modeling continues, incorporating sustainability, customer journeys, digital ecosystems, and value streams into cohesive BPM methodologies. This is accompanied by using a mix of different design, analysis and data-science techniques.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

A very valuable resource is of course Zbigniew’s recent co-authored book :
Practical Business Process Modeling and Analysis: Design and optimize business processes incrementally for AI transformation using BPMN

In general, I heavily recommend to use ChatBots as “interactive learning companions”. Especially if you use various of them in a combined way. They already reached a reasonable mature state including the possibility to guide you to trustful information sources during your “learning dialog” or to use their agentic features for powerful research. Very good examples are Le Chat by Mistral (https://chat.mistral.ai/chat), Gemini by Google (https://gemini.google.com/app), ChatGPT by OpenAI (https://chatgpt.com/), Copilot by Microsoft (https://copilot.microsoft.com/), Claude by Anthropic (https://www.anthropic.com/claude) or Perplexity AI (https://www.perplexity.ai/).

Books on Conceptual Modelling:
Domain-Specific Conceptual Modeling (Part 1): Concepts, Methods and Tools,

Domain-Specific Conceptual Modeling (Part 2): Concepts, Methods and ADOxx Tools,

Domain-Specific Conceptual Modeling (Part 3): The OMiLAB Community of Practice,

Metamodeling: Applications and Trajectories to the Future.

Free Conceptual Modelling Tools:
Library of more than 80 OMiLAB Modelling Tools,

ADONIS Community Edition,

ADOIT Community Edition,

ADONIS Academy Programme,

ADOIT Academy Programme

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Any knowledge and experiences gathered in the past will influence decisions for the future. Therefore, even if specific skills, techniques or technologies are not really relevant any more, they are important to evaluate, decide on and apply new upcoming approaches.

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Prof. dr. Amy Van Looy

Prof. dr. Amy Van Looy holds a Ph.D. in applied economics. Before entering academia, she worked as an IT consultant. Being an associate professor at Ghent University, she coordinates the research cluster of “Process orientation” at the Department of Business Informatics and Operations Management. She teaches, among others, courses on research methods, process management, technology innovation and social media. Amy Van Looy is the recipient of the “Highest Award for Achievement” at the Dale Carnegie Consulting Program in 2007, the “Award for Best Contribution” at the OnTheMove Academy in 2010, the faculty’s “PhD Tutor Award” in 2022, as well as paper nominations (e.g., BPM2018, HICSS2025) and paper rewards (e.g., BPM2019). She was nominated in the top-10 for “Young ICT Lady of the year 2014” by the Belgian magazine DataNews, and was recognized as a tech role model by the non-profit “InspiringFifty Belgium” in 2020 (i.e., for being one of Belgium’s 50 most inspiring women in technology).

WWW: https://www.amyvanlooy.eu/
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X: AmyVanLooy

How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

The biggest 2026 trend affecting how organizations are looking at their business processes is definitely related to generative artificial intelligence (genAI), including all its variants, tools, and (potential) realizations. It is true that AI in general has already been frequently mentioned in the past years as a dominant technology to support and rethink business processes (e.g., by software robots such as robotic process automation and chatbots as well by physical manufacturing robots and service robots). And this AI wave will continue to evolve, but now being specifically expanded with genAI.

Especially the rapid pace and new possibilities offered by genAI increasingly raise questions on how to properly take advantage of the wide range of more novel, widespread and accessible genAI opportunities. Of course, this also come with the need for a more critical attitude toward genAI use, which I still consider as a major challenge for organizations and society at large. For instance, genAI can be positively supporting routine tasks and beyond, while also security and ethical concerns need to be more carefully addressed. For instance, examples are related to underlying copyright issues and hallucination problems with fake information. Nevertheless, I am sure that 2026 will bring new avenues to further explore how genAI can be used for facilitating all kinds of BPM activities in a more trusted and fair manner, among others during process modelling, process execution and process optimization.

Additionally, instead of seeing genAI as taking over human tasks or human roles, a more strategic approach is required to use genAI for the better. By this, I mean using genAI for dealing with internal and external pressures that come, among others, from pressures surrounding burnouts, work overload problems, social and green sustainability, customer centricity, and agility needs. Besides strategic alignment for genAI, also business-IT alignment issues remain critical.

Hence, the AI trends in general and genAI in particular demonstrate once more that the BPM discipline is not just a technical discipline but also a true managerial discipline that needs a holistic lens by extending the traditional BPM lifecycle with managerial, cultural and structural features to obtain long-term process performance outcomes.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

Thinking in terms of end-to-end value streams (instead of ad-hoc projects or siloed functional views per department) will remain highly important in 2026. By this, I mean putting the end customers first, and then exploring what business opportunities appear based on using digital technologies. While customer thinking is not necessarily new to 2026 (also in earlier years), much stronger employee-related skills will be needed to explore such business process opportunities because this contrasts from incremental process changes. Instead, upgrading skills related to out-of-the-box thinking, co-creation, ecosystem thinking, and experimentation with trial-and-error will increase much more in importance for creating business value to organizations.

Also, this value thinking needs to be further extended beyond purely financial or economic value (e.g., not just in terms of process costs, time, quality, flexibility). Instead, value thinking also need reconsidering the ecological footprints of specific business processes and the related social implications for obtaining a more responsible way of applying BPM. In this regard, AI algorithms are not necessarily fair and could be biased towards certain majority views. Also in decision-making, AI decision support mechanisms are not necessarily transparent and genAI features still have a high risk of hallucinations and so providing fake information. Consequently, a critical eye on using BPM for the good, will only increase in importance in 2026. This applies to everyone involved in BPM, namely BPM users, analysts, developers and employees in general will substantially benefit from a more open though critical view on how to explore those technology-based process opportunities.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Since genAI and other digital technologies are evolving, it remains important for organizations to stay up-to-date about recent developments in the digital landscape and which BPM implications are related. For instance, managers and employees can attend seminars, conferences and even look for collaborations with universities (e.g., for participating in case study research or action-based research). Managers can also inform themselves about BPM updates by talking to consultants, especially since their own company’s core competence might not necessarily be in BPM and digital technologies. This way of working also aligns with the idea of ecosystem thinking, namely partnering with other companies and universities to find synergies and co-creation options.

Furthermore, managers and employees might follow Master university classes (e.g., as a kind of credit contract system) on the advanced and/or emerging topics of BPM, process mining and process innovation. Just one example is a practitioner-oriented Springer handbook that explains how organizations can improve their business processes based on agile projects by taking advantage of digital technologies, and which is also used as university teaching materials with a lot of practical cases (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-59770-1).

Additionally, the annual International Business Process Management Conference will be organized in Toronto this year, and which I highly recommend for your October planning. This conference offers a broad range of workshops, fora, panels, presentations, etc. Such a conference is also a nice way for networking and getting in touch with BPM scholars and industry professionals.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

The BPM skills of, let us say 20 or 30 years ago, are still relevant nowadays to exploit daily business. It is rather a matter of extending them with more explorative skills for also thinking in terms of innovating business processes in an agile manner. The underlying idea of process modelling, monitoring and optimization is still needed, and will remain valid. This means that the BPM lifecycle remains more or less the same, though requiring faster iterations in particular. While process execution used to be with software-specific BPM systems (or alternatively, ERP or SAP systems), those dedicated tools are now being extended towards more AI and genAI features by tool vendors. Hence, I consider those renewed skills and features not as opposing to or contradicting with conventional BPM skills, but rather as an organic evolution towards more ambidexterity for which the traditional exploitation of business processes remains valid while also keeping an eye on exploring new business opportunities and benefiting from digital technologies.

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Madison Lundquist

As Principal Research Lead, Madison Lundquist develops and executes APQC’s research agenda for process and performance management and serves as subject matter expert. She interviews leading organizations on their practices, identifies key findings from the research projects, and shares the approaches and best practices organizations use to manage processes, improve organizational agility, and continuously improve.

WWW: apqc.org/expertise/process-performance-management
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How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

While the digital landscape is evolving rapidly, I don’t believe the fundamentals of BPM are changing all that much. If anything, having a strong foundation is becoming even more critical. The core essentials of process management remain consistent. Each year, when we ask process professionals about their priorities and challenges, the same themes continue to surface: process management, continuous improvement, and data and measurement. New technologies like AI, automation, and process mining can be powerful enablers, but they don’t replace the basics. In the end, people still run processes, and people don’t naturally love change—strong change management is what helps organizations move forward.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

Each year, APQC surveys process professionals to understand their priorities and challenges for the year ahead. This year’s data highlights three areas where change is most needed within the process discipline: technology and tools, a more collaborative culture, and stronger integration with IT. In my view, these areas are deeply interconnected, especially as the digital landscape continues to evolve. Process professionals increasingly recognize the need to work more closely with IT to successfully implement new tools and technologies, and that level of integration isn’t possible without a collaborative culture.

When we look more closely at the skills BPM practitioners need to develop, survey participants consistently point to design thinking, change management, and analytics as the most critical. Together, these skills help practitioners not only design better processes but also drive adoption and demonstrate value through data.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

APQC has a robust Resource Library that includes content critical to process management professionals, along with our training courses and webinars that help process professionals learn the necessary skills to be successful in an ever-changing business environment.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Looking at our survey data over the past several years, problem solving and data management/data visualization have declined in perceived importance. We’re also seeing facilitation and project management ranking lower for 2026, which I find surprising. Facilitation, in particular, remains a critical skill for process professionals—especially when the goal is to truly understand how work happens across the organization. Strong facilitation and project management skills are what enable teams to thoughtfully assess the current state, propose meaningful improvements, and successfully execute change.

I also believe data management and visualization are undervalued in this year’s results. As digital tools and technologies evolve rapidly, clean, well-managed data becomes even more essential. Underestimating the importance of data foundations could ultimately create challenges for organizations that don’t invest the time and attention these skills require.

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Prof. Dr. Jan Mendling

Prof. Dr. Jan Mendling is the Einstein-Professor for Process Science with the Department of Computer Science at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, adjunct professor at Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, and Principal Investigator at the Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin. His research interests include various topics in the area of business process management and information systems. He is co-author of the textbooks Fundamentals of Business Process Management and Wirtschaftsinformatik. He has published more than 500 research papers and articles, among others in IEEE Transaction journals and MIS Quarterly. He is inaugural Co-Editor-in-Chief of Process Science and Co-Founder of Noreja, a tool vendor focusing on generative process intelligence.

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WWW: Noreja website

How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

Best the organizational management of processes should dictate where which AI technology is used to make a substantial impact on the processes. But yes, AI functionality also improves and speeds up the way how we manage our processes. In noreja, we have integrated analytical support based on GenAI. Agentic functionality will be next. Autonomous agents will take care of tasks in the background and trigger actions where necessary.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

Companies need resilience more than ever. This requires building capabilities and having processes under control. The next crisis is just around the corner. Denial is the wrong response to it.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

The Fundaments of Business Process Management capture all the core methods that have not changed. It is great to see that now translations are available in German, French, Greek, Indonesian, Mongolian, Persian, Polish, Spanish, Ukrainian and soon also Brazilian Portuguese and Italian. These translations make fundamental BPM concepts even more accessible. I am very grateful for those who took part in the translation teams.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

The Case Management Model and Notation is no more relevant. Among others, Camunda has marked their CMMN support as deprecated for a while. In contrast, agentic automation is on the rise in exactly this spot. Where CMMN was meant to address the underspecification of processes that humans should somehow fill, it is exactly here that agentic process automation can fill the gap.

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Nathaniel Palmer

Nathaniel Palmer is the CEO of Infocap AI Corp and the author of “Gigatrends” (2024) which recently reached #1 on Amazon’s “Hot New Releases” list for books on AI and Machine Learning. Rated as the “#1 Most Influential Thought Leader in Business Process Management (BPM)” by independent research, Nathaniel has also co-author over a dozen books on BPM and Process Improvement, as well as being the first individual named as a “Laureate in Workflow.” Over his career has he has the led the design and execution for some of the industry’s largest and most complex projects involving investments exceeding $200 Million and has overseen more than $2.5 billion in R&D around automation and AI.

WWW: www.infocap.ai
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How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

Finally (!!) we are witnessing the inescapable yet fundamental shift from process as a static artifact to living, adaptive system.

For decades BPM was defined by documenting workflows, standardizing execution, and incrementally improving efficiency. The notion of adaptable, dynamic defined processed emerged as a first-class citizen within the BPM discipline in the late-2000s with Adaptable and Dynamic Case Management. Yet until now it was cast within the false dichotomy of Adaptability versus Automation – rather than embracing and enabling Adaptable Automation.

Today AI (notably Agentic AI) turns that notion on its head. Unlike Generative AI tools that provide answers or generate content, the newest wave of AI can act by executing tasks, collaborating with humans, and dynamically adapting to new challenges. “Agentic” or “Agent AI” moves beyond providing information to taking action, enabling processes which are no longer simply executed, but interpreted, optimized, and acted upon dynamically by digital workers operating, either with agency (autonomously) or working in concert with humans co-workers.

This present three significant changes in perspective on how changing how organizations manage and run processes.

First, work is moving from information → action. Generative AI was interesting when it produced answers. It becomes transformational when it executes multi-step workflows autonomously. That turns processes into decision-driven systems, not flowcharts.

Second, organizations are shifting from task automation to end-to-end orchestration. Intelligent automation now spans documents, decisions, integrations, compliance, and human collaboration—collapsing silos that BPM unintentionally reinforced for decades.

Third, trust becomes the limiting factor. Black-box AI fails in regulated, mission-critical environments. The future belongs to glass-box automation: observable, explainable, auditable systems grounded in operational excellence disciplines, not statistical mysticism.

In short, AI doesn’t replace or obviate process management, but rather hastens its need for successful business transformations, especially where AI adoption is deemed a key success factor.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

Most of all (and building on the points above) the BPM practitioner of 2026 is no longer a process modeler but rather the designer of human-machine collaboration. This true not just for human facing processes, but in understanding and leading the holistic orchestration of processes (or more apropos, attempting to holistically understand the process and moments of automation within your enterprise).

The new mission of BPM practitioners is make palpable and comprehendible to business stakeholders the re-envisioning the structure of the task to be not a single, discrete unit of work, but business outcomes, and to remove the distinction between what supports a task and the task itself – as well as who performs the work.

This is framed by making the work done by humans more consistent, predictable, and less reliant upon subjective interpretation of policies and rules, while simultaneously expanding the aperture for what is automatable, where digital workers and human workers use the same systems, follow the same rules, as well as are equally observable and accountable. Success requires a new set of critical skills and techniques than previously defined BPM as a discipline. These include:

Decision Intelligence & Rule Design: the ability to externalize decisions from code and models into explicit, governed logic is foundational. If you can’t explain why a system acted, you don’t control it.

Agent Orchestration & Digital Workforce Design: practitioners must design how AI agents, humans, and systems collaborate—who decides, who executes, who escalates.

Operational Data Literacy: not data science, but knowing which data matters operationally, how it flows, and how it creates accountability.

Process Observability & Metrics: AI without measurement is theater, not transformation.

BPMN as an AI Orchestration Language: there are very individuals sufficiently knowledgeable of BPMN, DMN, and CMMN to use create useful models of agentic workflows which stand on their own, yet BPMN remains the closest thing to a true lingua franca for AI Orchestration.

Behaviors and attitudes that create value

Skeptical optimism: excited about AI, intolerant of hype.

Human-centric mindset: automation exists to amplify human capability, not obscure responsibility.

Systems thinking: understanding second- and third-order impacts of automation across people, compliance, and culture.

Governance-first thinking: designing control, transparency, and auditability from day one.

The practitioners who thrive will be those who can translate ambition into execution, rather than evangelizing a particular methodology or technology. Be a change agent and transformer, not an ideologue.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Books

Gigatrends (Koulopoulos/Palmer, 2024): a foundational primer for understanding where work, identity, AI and automation are heading over the next decade and beyond.

Decision Management Systems (Taylor/Raden) still one of the clearest foundations for understanding decision intelligence

Business Process Management: A Rigorous Approach (Martyn A. Ould): still the single best source for understanding BPM as a discipline and as a learning foundation to build upon with contemporary concepts such as agentic AI.

Technical Learning Paths

Python (if not already conversant, start your own learning path and explore frameworks such as Django, Flask, FastAPI, et al.)

Decision intelligence and rules-based automation platforms

Low-code / no-code workflow orchestration tools

AI governance and compliance training (especially for regulated sectors)

The driving the learn path behind the modern BPM Practitioner should be learning how to operationalize AI, not how to demo it.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Some hard truths about skills that are no longer relevant or mostly hype:

Pure process modeling without execution context: BPMN diagrams that never touch production systems are mostly irrelevant, and this is most of them (i.e., out of the sum total of process modeling artifacts only a small percent make it execution). Process modeling is not dwindling in value as much as it is becoming a lost art, but what will sustain it is the ability to create models as living artifacts, able to be linked to execution context.

“Prompt engineering” as a standalone skill: useful tactically, but not a profession. Prompts don’t scale, but the key to success for a BPM Practitioner has always come down to the ability to ask the right questions. In the GenAI era this will often mean framing the right questions as prompts, but prompts are only as effective the questions they represent (however they are expressed).

Black-box machine learning for core operations: if you can’t explain or audit it, you can’t deploy it responsibly at scale. All decisions and actions made through automation must be transparent, observable, and appealable.

AI “ethics” without operational accountability: Ethical AI discussions disconnected from real workflows, controls, and metrics are well-intentioned but insufficient. Focusing on automated outcomes is more important than chasing model training bias.

AI-powered Automation Without Modeling: The biggest hype of all is the belief that AI strategy can exist without operational excellence. It cannot. That gap is where most failures occur. Automating poorly designed processes is faster than process improvement, and can also be more effective when transparent and aligned to outcomes. The critical difference is not upfront re-engineering but continuous measurement and optimization.

AI doesn’t diminish the role of BPM. Raises it raises the bar and hastens the need for skill BPM professionals able to apply traditional methods to contemporary system design. The future belongs to practitioners who can design clarity in a world of increasing autonomy.

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Brian Reale

Brian Reale is a serial entrepreneur. Brian founded a telecommunications company in 2000 called Unete Telecomunicaciones which provided, voice, data, and satellite services in Latin America. Brian sold Unete to a publicly traded US telecom company in 2000. Brian was also the co-founder of Spotless LLC, an entertainment technology company that developed projection mapping technology for major live entertainment industries.

Brian has been involved in the workflow and BPM industry since he co-founded ProcessMaker in 2000. ProcessMaker is a leading open source BPM suite. The ProcessMaker BPMS has been recognized with numerous awards and pushes the bounds of BPM with a fundamental belief that process management can be simple, elegant, and easy to use.

Brian graduated magna cum laude from Duke University in 1993 and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in linguistics in Ecuador in 1994.

WWW: https://www.processmaker.com
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Twitter: @breale
Twitter: @processmaker

How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

The fundamental shift for 2026 is the realization that Agentic AI is the natural evolution of Case Management. For decades, Case Management was the “exception” to the rule—the way we handled unstructured work that required human judgment. Now, the AI Agent has become the ultimate knowledge worker.

From Deterministic to Intent-Driven: We are moving away from “Hard-coded Workflows.” Instead of a rigid path, we give an Agent a goal (the “Case”) and the boundaries (the “Governance”). The Agent then orchestrates the steps to reach that goal.

The Orchestration Stack: We are seeing a “Layered Intelligence” approach. Organizations no longer rely on a single LLM. They use BPMN as the control plane to prevent “agent-to-agent” chaos (the digital equivalent of Chinese phone tag), DMN for cost-effective deterministic logic, and Agents to handle the “messy” middle of the work.

The Death of the Static Interface: We are seeing the “disappearing UI.” Instead of users clicking through 10 screens in a portal, they are interacting with processes via natural language or voice. The process is becoming invisible, running in the background and only “surfacing” to a human when a judgment call is required.

Process Intelligence as the Foundation: You cannot have effective AI without Process Intelligence (PI). Organizations are realizing that feeding an LLM their data isn’t enough; they need to feed it their operational context. PI acts as the digital twin that tells the AI exactly how work currently happens so the AI can actually improve it rather than just automate a broken step.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

The BPM practitioner of 2026 is less of a “Map Maker” and more of a “System Architect of Intent.”

Skill: Governing Autonomy: You must learn how to design “BPMN Guardrails.” The skill is no longer just drawing a line from A to B; it’s defining the sandbox in which an AI Agent can safely operate without creating a feedback loop or a compliance nightmare.

Technique: Hybrid Modeling (BPMN + DMN + LLM): Value is created by knowing which tool to use for which task. You use DMN for regulated, binary decisions to keep costs low and outcomes certain; you use BPMN to maintain the state machine; and you use Agents for everything that requires “understanding.”

Attitude: Pragmatic Optimism: You must embrace the power of Agents to solve the “un-automatable,” but maintain a healthy skepticism regarding the “black box.” The best practitioners will be those who refuse to let agents manage agents without a structured BPMN “supervisor.”

Skill: Prompt Engineering & AI Literacy: You don’t need to be a data scientist, but you must understand how to “instruct” an AI agent. Understanding RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and how to give an agent the right “knowledge base” is more important than knowing how to drag-and-drop a gateway.

Technique: Value-Based Orchestration: Stop measuring “time to complete a task.” Start measuring “value created per process cycle.” In 2026, practitioners must focus on orchestrating diverse “workers”—humans, bots, and AI agents—into a unified stream.

Attitude: Radical Agility: The business environment is too volatile for “annual process reviews.” Practitioners must adopt a mindset of continuous, real-time optimization.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

The “Trifecta” Frameworks: Study the intersection of BPMN 2.0, DMN 1.x, and AI Agentic Frameworks (like LangChain or AutoGPT). Understanding how these three standards talk to each other is the “Gold Standard” of 2026.
Case Management Theory: Revisit the core principles of CMMN (Case Management Model and Notation). Even if the notation itself is less common, the philosophy—that work is a collection of events and data rather than a straight line—is exactly how Agentic AI operates.
Cost-Benefit Modeling for AI: Learn to calculate the “Token Cost vs. DMN Cost.” As models get larger, the ability to offload logic to deterministic DMN tables becomes a major competitive advantage in operational efficiency.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Irrelevant: Perfectionist Process Mapping. If you are spending months on a “Current State” map, you are documenting the past. In 2026, Process Intelligence (PI) tells us the current state in real-time; the practitioner’s job is to design the “Governed Future State.”

Hype: The “Agent-Only” Enterprise. There is a lot of hype around letting Agents run the whole show. This is a recipe for disaster. Without a BPMN State Machine, you lose auditability and control. We don’t want “Chinese Phone Tag” where one agent misunderstands another until the process drifts into a hallucination.

Hype: Purely Generative Decisioning. Using an LLM to decide on a credit limit or a medical diagnosis is still a “hype” risk. For those outcomes, we still require the DMN layer for total transparency and 100% repeatability.

Irrelevant: Manual Coding for Connectors. Building “hand-coded” integrations and scripts is a dying art. AI can now generate these connectors or use “action-based” APIs on the fly. If you are spending weeks writing integration code, you are falling behind.

Irrelevant: Rigid BPMN Perfectionism. Spending three months perfecting a 50-page BPMN manual is now a liability. By the time you finish the map, the business environment has changed.

Hype: Fully “Autonomous” Enterprises. While we talk a lot about agents, the idea that a company can run entirely without human oversight in 2026 is still hype. The “Human-in-the-loop” is not an elective; it is a requirement for governance, ethics, and complex decision-making.

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Adrian Reed

Adrian Reed is a true advocate of the analysis profession. In his day job, he acts as Principal Consultant at Blackmetric Business Solutions where he provides business analysis consultancy and training solutions to a range of clients in varying industries. He is editor-in-chief of the quarterly open-access magazine BA Digest, and he speaks internationally on topics relating to business analysis and business change. Adrian wrote the 2016 book ‘Be a Great Problem Solver… Now’ and the 2018 book ‘Business Analyst’

You can read Adrian’s blog at http://www.adrianreed.co.uk and connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianreed/

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How do AI and other trends impact the BA?

This is a really interesting question, Zbigniew, and one that lots of people are asking. I suppose at this point it’s worth highlighting that my background is business analysis, rather than business process management. Of course, there’s overlap, but I’m likely to have a slightly different lens on these questions compared with your other interviewees…

In my mind, this question has three core angles:

Angle 1: How can BAs utilize AI to become even more efficient and effective
Angle 2: How can BAs work with their stakeholders to ensure organizations deploy AI in an effective, ethical, safe and secure way.
Angle 3: How might customers, suppliers or “service users” start using AI, and how might that impact our processes, services or “systems” (in the broadest sense).

I think a lot of the debate is currently around Angle 1, and that’s understandable. Yet, for me, Angle 2 is even more crucial. And there’s so much value that a BA can add here. One of the key ways I believe I’ve added value in my career is encouraging people to pause, stop and understand the real set of problems they are trying to solve, or outcomes they are trying to achieve. Too often, people reach for the most seductive, shiniest, newest thing. That’s human nature, we all do it. But with something like AI, where the consequences of getting it wrong could be huge, ensuring adequate thought is crucial.

Angle 3 is a big topic on its own, so that’s a blog for another time. But imagine a world where a customer sends an AI agent to interact with your company’s live chat. Do you allow that? Do you care? Can you even detect it…? But that’s just scratching the surface…

So, in my view, BAs absolutely need to be thinking about AI, experimenting, and learning.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help Business Analysts create value for their organizations in 2026?

For me it’s always about ensuring that the desired outcomes are stated and agreed. I’ve been on too many projects where there’s surface level agreement on what’s being delivered… but when you pick away at the edges you realize that people have no shared agreement on “why”.

This sounds trivial, but it isn’t. This can happen at a micro or macro level. People might say “we want a new CRM system” or even something like “we just want a new field”. Well fine, a new field sounds small doesn’t it?

But when you probe, you find that they want a “source of business” field so the marketing team can test which marketing campaigns work. Their actual aim is to “optimise marketing spend”. Once you know that, you can work with them to figure out a way of doing that… and spoiler alert: a new field (on its own) almost certainly won’t achieve that.

Add AI into the mix, and the potential impacts on process, policy and ethics and there needs to be someone asking the tricky questions. For example “what groups might be negatively impacted if we do this? And are we OK with that, ethically? Can we mitigate it?”, and sometimes, frankly “should we actually be doing this at all?”.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Well, obviously everyone should read bpmtips.com! And I’d also plug a quarterly magazine that I edit, BA Digest. It’s completely free and available at BAdigest.link.

I’d also say find people on LinkedIn who are knowledgeable practitioners and follow them. There are too many people here that I really respect for me to name anyone (as I fear I’d leave someone out!).

Also, with AI, I genuinely think things are moving so quickly the best way to learn it is to do it. Start, experiment. If your company doesn’t currently have an AI policy, do it at home. There are so many resources out there, many are free.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I always struggle with this question! I find myself taking meeting notes much less frequently now, as I find usually (for non-confidential meetings) people are happy for them to be recorded and transcribed. However, I’m always very diligent about checking the meeting summaries (again, this is an area where bias can inadvertently happen. E.g. if someone is speaking English with an accent, their points may not be transcribed accurately, which means their views are not accurately represented. It’s so important to be aware of stuff like that).

But, on the whole, I think it’s “the same but different”. Business analysis has always been, in my view, a primarily human endeavour. Perhaps it’s even more so now, as AI tools can help with some of the more routine aspects, we can spend more time with people. And that has to be a good thing.

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Björn Richerzhagen

The trained businessman, business economist and business IT specialist is one of the most sought-after BPM experts. The BPM rationalist has been at the interface between departments and technology for two decades now and sees himself as a translator between the worlds. As a BPM consultant and trainer, he is OCEB and CBPP certified and accompanies process initiatives at company level as well as process automation projects as a workflow analyst.

In his private life, the family man is involved in numerous community / charity projects, enjoys traveling (Europe and Africa), listens to a lot of music (everything that has bass) and is an enthusiastic ocean sailor.

WWW: https://www.mi-nautics.com/
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How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

We observe that our customers are highly interested in AI with a strong focus on AI being a resource in a process, not so much being the resource orchestrating the process. Often they fail to identify use cases that ofter a true business benefit. Hence, it is often a discovery and get accustomed to the AI tech stacks. Anyway, we assume use cases creating a real business value are on the rise and will gain traction in 2026.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

Besides from foundational process management skills (they never get old), we foresee that proper training on AI and skills on creating effective guardrails will become most relevant things to work on. To accept AI agents will become team members will speed up process execution generally as they can be engaged in tedious work whereas human colleagues may focus on what the can do best: human oriented work, system design, creative work, exception handling etc.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Numerous sources for AI and process management can be found not only in books but also on the internet. The first one is still rapidly developing. Hence, the time it takes to publicize cannot keep up with current developments. Numerous blogs, video and pod casts (mainly from scientists, vendors and consultants) offer valuable insights but have to be critically judged if it is just buzz or if it contains generally applicable principles. The latter, process management, is more profound and magazines and books can be helpful for first steps in process management. Anyway, recent developments in BPM can also be found in numerous online sources.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Process Mining and RPA seem to be beyond its peak. Customers invested heavily but either did not get the expected return or are now facing the consequences they have not been able to foresee. Whilst edge cases exist where a positive business value is existent, the advertised approach by tool vendors to be generally applicable on a bread range in processes turned out to be technically true but often of little value when a ROI is calculated.

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Pedro Robledo

Pedro Robledo is President and Co-founder of the Spanish chapter of ABPMP International and a leading authority in Business Process Management (BPM), digital transformation, and artificial intelligence. He is the author of the Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM, 2014), a framework adopted globally to assess and elevate process maturity across seven pillars: Strategy, Processes, Technology, People, Governance, Methodologies, and Culture, helping organizations define and execute successful BPM roadmaps.

With over 25 years of experience, Pedro’s mission is to help professionals and organizations rethink, redesign, and future-proof their processes, connecting operational excellence with strategic innovation. He has led initiatives in multinational organizations and served as a jury member for the WfMC Awards for Excellence in BPM & Workflow, reinforcing his position as a recognized thought leader in the field.

Currently, Pedro focuses on:
Acting as a thought leader and architect in BPM, AI, and Autonomous Agents
Designing strategic roadmaps for BPM, AI-driven automation, and enterprise architecture
Researching Agentic AI and its impact on organizational process maturity
Teaching and delivering advanced, strategic BPM education, bridging innovation, governance, and operational excellence

He shares insights and thought leadership through his newsletters and publications:
Diario de un COO – High-level operational management insights: https://lnkd.in/dnYn4ybU
BPM & AI-Driven Innovation – The process revolution in the age of AI: https://lnkd.in/dE8eH3VR
Voces BPM – Inspirational cases and people: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/voces-bpm-casos-testimonios-7346543494393466881/

Pedro is committed to empowering professionals and organizations to think critically about processes, moving beyond tools and certifications through consulting, advisory, frameworks, training, and applied intellectual leadership.
Philosophy: He believes that processes are not just tasks to manage—they are the foundation for innovation, resilience, and value creation in the age of AI.

Pedro’s specialties include BPM, BPMM, PEMM, AI applied to processes, Agentic AI, process innovation, enterprise architecture, process benchmarking, strategic roadmaps, BPMN, and DMN.
He currently counts 32,722 LinkedIn followers, reflecting his growing influence as a BPM and AI thought leader, with over 1,700 new followers gained in the past year.

WWW: pedrorobledobpm.blogspot.com.es
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How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

By 2026, processes are no longer simply managed. They are co-managed with AI, but this does not mean chaos, nor does it mean abandoning structured processes.

AI has pushed BPM beyond documentation and isolated optimization toward continuous, autonomous orchestration. However, one of the biggest challenges organizations face today is not the lack of automation, but the lack of coherence. Many companies have accumulated hundreds of task-level automations, copilots, bots, and agents that optimize locally but damage performance end to end.

This is where BPM becomes more important than ever.

Processes are evolving from static representations into living operational systems. BPMN models are no longer frozen diagrams; they are increasingly connected to execution engines, process mining, and decision services, forming operational digital twins that reflect reality in near real time. These twins allow organizations to understand how work truly flows from start to finish, not just how individual tasks are automated.

At the same time, decision automation becomes a structural element. DMN is essential to ensure that AI-driven decisions remain consistent, explainable, auditable, and aligned with strategy and regulation. Without DMN, AI quickly becomes a black box operating at task level, increasing risk rather than reducing it.

This brings us to CMMN and case management, which play a crucial, but often misunderstood role. The rise of AI agents and knowledge-intensive work has revived interest in CMMN, as many business scenarios are event-driven, non-linear, and unpredictable. Case management is extremely powerful for handling variability, exceptions, and human judgment.

However, a dangerous misconception is emerging: the idea that everything should become case management.

Structured, repeatable, high-volume processes do not disappear in 2026. They still require BPMN, clear flows, performance control, and optimization. Treating all work as cases creates fragmentation, weak governance, and loss of end-to-end visibility. Autonomous agents should not live only inside CMMN worlds; they must operate across BPMN, DMN, and CMMN, depending on the nature of the work.

The real shift is not BPMN versus CMMN, but intentional orchestration. BPM provides the backbone that connects structured flows, unstructured cases, and AI-driven decisions into a coherent operating model.

Human roles, therefore, move upward. People stop managing task execution and start governing behavior, intent, and outcomes. AI handles coordination, optimization, and execution, but BPM ensures that all of this happens end to end, not in isolated pockets.

In short, BPM in 2026 becomes the discipline that prevents intelligent automation from becoming intelligent chaos. In 2026, BPM is not about choosing between BPMN, CMMN, or AI agents. It is about orchestrating them coherently. Without BPM, intelligent automation becomes fragmented, risky, and opaque. With BPM, organizations gain control, clarity, and scalability, even in an autonomous world. The real challenge is not automating more. It is automating with intent, structure, and governance. And that is exactly where BPM proves its relevance again.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

The BPM professional of 2026 is not a simple process analyst, nor a task automator. They are a business process architect and business orchestration designer.

A critical skill is the ability to design end-to-end processes that combine BPMN, DMN, and CMMN intentionally. Practitioners must know when to use structured flows, when to enable case-driven behavior, and how decisions and AI agents operate consistently across both. This architectural thinking is what separates scalable automation from fragile experimentation.

AI-first process design is no longer optional, but it must be process-first, not task-first. BPM professionals must be able to challenge initiatives that automate individual tasks without understanding upstream and downstream impact. Value in 2026 comes from optimizing the whole system, not local efficiency.

Decision-centric BPM remains essential. DMN provides the guardrails that allow autonomous agents to act responsibly across both structured processes and cases. Without decision models, agents become unpredictable and governance collapses.

Process mining skills also evolve. Practitioners must use mining not just to discover flows, but to expose fragmentation caused by disconnected automations, identifying where task-level optimization has broken end-to-end performance.

From a behavioral standpoint, BPM professionals must be comfortable saying no. No to automation without process context. No to agent deployments without governance. No to replacing structured processes with cases simply because “AI is flexible.”

Ethics and accountability remain central. As automation becomes more autonomous, BPM practitioners increasingly act as custodians of fairness, transparency, traceability, and compliance, across flows, cases, and decisions.

Above all, BPM in 2026 requires a relentless focus on business outcomes. Automating tasks is easy. Designing resilient, compliant, and scalable operating models is hard, and that is where BPM creates value.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

To operate at this level in 2026, learning must go far beyond tools.

The BPM classics remain essential because they teach systems thinking. Hammer, Rummler & Brache, and Weske provide the intellectual discipline needed to reason end to end, something desperately needed in an era of fragmented automation.

At the same time, practitioners must deepen their knowledge of BPMN, DMN, and CMMN as a coherent triad, not as isolated standards. Understanding how these standards complement each other is fundamental to governing AI-driven operations.

Formal education in Strategic Process Management becomes increasingly relevant, particularly when it incorporates process architecture, decision governance, AI, and maturity assessment. In complex organizations, knowing what to automate is less important than knowing what the organization is ready to automate.

This is why BPM maturity models regain strategic importance. My BPMM evolved for 2026, explicitly addressing AI, decision automation, agentic behavior, governance, and the balance between structured processes and cases, is essential to avoid both under-automation and reckless over-automation.

Beyond formal learning, practitioners must stay close to real implementations. Process mining academies, decision automation communities, and practitioner forums that discuss BPM + AI honestly (not just vendor marketing) are critical.
And, as always, experimentation matters. Working hands-on with AI agents inside structured processes and cases is the only way to truly understand where each approach adds value.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Some trends need to be challenged openly.

Task-level automation without end-to-end process thinking is rapidly becoming a liability. Organizations full of disconnected bots and copilots often perform worse than those with fewer but well-orchestrated automations.

Over-reliance on case management for everything is another emerging risk. CMMN is powerful, but it is not a universal replacement for BPMN. Treating all work as cases leads to loss of predictability, weak KPIs, and governance gaps.

Manual documentation and static modeling are also declining. AI now generates documentation automatically from execution data. The valuable skill is not writing documents, but validating, governing, and improving AI-generated process knowledge.

On the hype side, the idea of a fully self-managing organization remains fiction. Autonomous agents still need human-defined intent, constraints, and accountability. AGI- or ASI-driven BPM is not a practical reality in 2026, and pretending otherwise creates unrealistic expectations and poor decisions.

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Prof. Michael Rosemann

Dr Michael Rosemann is the Director of the Centre for Future Enterprise and a Professor for Information Systems at the Business School, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia.
Dr Rosemann’s main areas of research are corporate innovation, revenue resilience, process management and trust management. His work is focused on creating compelling future worlds with today’s possibilities that make current practices obsolete. As a researcher and advisor to board rooms and senior executives he is committed to advancing research-informed knowledge and confidence in order to appreciate the emerging design space and to create an increased ‘sense of ambition’ and innovation appetite.
Dr Rosemann is the author/editor of ten books, more than 350 refereed papers in outlets such as MIS Quarterly, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Information Systems and Journal of the Association of Information Systems, Editorial Board member of ten international journals (incl. MISQ Executive) and co-inventor of US and European patents. His ‘Handbook of Business Process Management’ (with Prof. Jan vom Brocke, second edition) is a comprehensive consolidation of global BPM thought leaders. His publications have been translated into German, Russian, Portuguese and Mandarin. His latest book, ‘The New Learning Economy’ (with Martin Betts), has been published by Routledge in December 2022.
Michael provides advice related to performance, innovation, trust and process management to organisations and their executives from diverse industries including telco, banking, insurance, utility, retail, public sector, higher education, logistics and the film industry. He is also the Honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in Southern Queensland.

WWW: https://www.qut.edu.au/research/michael-rosemann
WWW: http://www.michaelrosemann.com/
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @ismiro

How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

AI in all its forms – machine learning, generative AI, agentic AI – has three main impacts within business processes.

First, its deep machine learning capacity provides the opportunity to delegate a new range of typical human activities to technology. This is what I call autonomization as it reflects the ability of AI to autonomously make decisions. Instead of specifying what needs to be done (automation), and as common in business process modelling, autonomization requires a definition of the why of an activity or a process. Thus, organisations need to become more explicit in terms of process objectives and related constraints and guardrails. Also, responsibility will have to complement feasibility, viability and desirability as a key criterion in assessing process improvement proposals. This is why we developed a Process Canvas consisting of these four dimensions as a way to support comprehensive process contextualisation ‘on a page’.

Second, this increased potential for delegation will make substantial capabilities exclusive to humans available for future business processes. This impact is called humanization, and a BPM community traditionally focused on streamlining processes seems poorly prepared to benefit from this capability. This is a tremendous opportunity for process designers, but it will not be adequately harvested with common reductionist, technology-centric approaches. Instead, organisations are encouraged to follow a resource-based, human-centric view and explore the extent to which personal 1-1 advice, diagnostics, therapy, care or new services can add value to its business processes. In a world of ubiquitous AI utilization, humanization might become the distinct factor in tomorrow’s business processes.

Third, augmentation describes the AI-enabled creation of entirely new forms of value resulting from the interplay of humans and machines. For example, a retailer might enhance its online shopping process by providing a conversational as opposed to a transactional experience. A bank might use proactive banking and not only anticipate but flip the process and actually run transactions on behalf of its customers. And a university might consider precision education, i.e. personalised educational processes. This emergence of new value is in sharp contrast to the common elimination of non-value.

Beyond considering the impact of AI within processes, we need to be aware of the growing role of AI on business processes. This includes the use of AI along all stages of the business process lifecycle and includes AI-supported identification of high priority processes, detection of process issues, and conversational navigation across large process data derived via process mining. In addition, we also see an increased use and maturity of AI in the context of explorative BPM, i.e. supporting BPM professionals in identifying entirely new process design options.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

With the growing AI footprint in business processes, it is needless to state that data and algorithmic literacy, but also ethical literacy will be essential.

As we witness increasingly digitised, friction-free processes, we are moving from a focus on pain points to a concentration on opportunity points within business processes. Rather than only looking to the inside and analysing existing problems, BPM practitioners also need to explore a growing process design space and assess new value opportunities. This will mean experimentation might become more important than expertise, and the social licence to experiment with corporate but also with public business processes will be required. For example, we might see (autonomous) A/B testing more often embedded in processes that otherwise were aimed for predictability and stability. The required new skills, techniques and attitude include curiosity, environmental scanning, hypothesis testing and comfort with minimum viable business processes among others.

We also encourage organizations to develop futures literacy, i.e. assess different types of process futures – preferred, plausible, possible, probable futures – and develop robust response strategies so that process designs remain decisive and agile.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

The global uptake of the book ‘Fundamentals of Business Process Management’ by my dear colleagues Marlon Dumas, Marcello La Rosa, Jan Mendling and Hajo Reijers demonstrates that it remains the point of reference for every BPM professional. The very recent book Enterprise AI (edited by Shazia Sadiq, published by Springer 2026) provides a contemporary overview about the impact of scalable AI capability on organisational assets including its business processes. In this book, we also elaborate on the notion of process autonomization.

There are many high-quality BPM learning resources available, often with strong regional roots. One example is the largest Brazilian BPM YouTube channel, hosted by Andréa Magalhães from dheka, who visited us here at QUT in Brisbane last year. The channel covers a broad range of BPM topics (from fundamentals to innovation, research, and emerging topics) and has an impressive 30,000+ followers. A good podcast with a strong AI lens on all matters BPM is Lukas Egger’s Process Transformers.

The International BPM Conference will take place in Toronto, Canada, end of September. This remains the event that brings the global BPM community together like no other, including various forums and workshops to specific BPM topics, and it is always a wonderful week to experience and discuss the emerging state-of-the-art.

Finally, it is great to see the uptake of the new journal Process Science, the new flagship journal on BPM and process mining.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

As processes start to reach the state of being streamlined and digitised, techniques dedicated to the search of waste (Lean Management) and non-value might become less relevant. This will be amplified by the fact that in a world of cloud-based business processes, types of waste like bottlenecks will be a dying species.

There might be two nuanced versions of BPM becoming relevant soon. Individual Process Management (IPM) will be dedicated to the optimisation of our very own personal processes (e.g., shopping, banking, healthcare) as AI assistants might take over more of the transactional duties in our lives. As a consequence we might become orchestrators of such individual processes. How we approach and best support Individual Process Management is still in its infancy.

Public Process Management (PPM) is about entire national business processes. Digital infrastructure including government processes are becoming a new distinct competitive feature of global investment and trade attraction. The design and management of such processes is still poorly understood, exposed to a wide range of contextual factors (e.g., national risk aversion, digital literacy). The diversity of global process practices is a rich source of insight for academics and PPM professionals.

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Serge Schiltz

Serge Schiltz is CEO and founder of processCentric GmbH, a European consulting and training firm focused on business process management. With his extensive practical experience as a senior consultant working with clients on their BPM challenges in different industries, he has been able to build a solid reputation over the past decades. Author, trainer, university lecturer and conference speaker in English, German and French. Member of OMG’s DMN Task Force and contributor to the OMG Certified Expert in BPM (OCEB) examination.

WWW: https://www.processcentric.ch/en
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WWW: XING profile

How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

The way that we approach process discovery could potentially take an entirely new perspective if we use generative AI tools for documenting business processes. To date, the way business representatives describe their processes is influenced by the process analyst, who typically takes a BPM expert approach and gives direction to the interviews. If we manage to build AI tools that can transform process descriptions as made by SMEs in the form of written text, audio, or video (Why not describe your processes using Lego or Playmobil for Business?), there will be less of the expert bias in process modeling and models will be truly owned by the business.

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

It remains key for BPM practitioners to understand the value proposition and strategy of the organizations that they work with. To me, OMG’s Business Motivation Model (BMM) is one of the most important tool to understand and apply for being able deliver value to an organization through BPM.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

The BPM certifications of OMG (OCEB certification program) cover the Business Motivation Model and it is no surprise that many candidates have difficulty answering the BMM questions. OMG’s BPM certification task force is currently finalizing the questions for the new edition of the Fundamental level exam, of which 10% will about the BMM, 70% BPMN, 15% DMN, and 5% CMMN. There is little use modeling business processes, rules, or cases, as long as you don’t understand the business context and purpose. If you are looking to understand BMM, you can read my books for the Fundamental or Intermediate exam certification preparation, or the Fundamental prep book of Tim Weilkiens. My colleague Joshua Ara and I are currently putting the final touches to a new book that will prepare you for the next edition OCEB Fundamental exam … expect this to be published late February or early March.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I see a lot of potential in case modeling using CMMN. Yes, this approach has not been successful (yet) and some vendors even completely scrapped if from their offering, while enhancing the capabilities of BPMN adhoc subprocesses. I expect that this proprietary approach will disappear in the near future and that BPM practioners will at last understand the value that the standard CMMN brings. Read Bruce Silver’s “CMMN Method & Style” if you are not familiar with it yet, or my new book that I mentioned above. There are excellent tools on the market that offer CMMN support. Watch out for Trisotech and Flowable!

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Jim Sinur

Jim Sinur is an independent thought leader in applying smart Digital Business Platforms (DBP), Customer Experience/Journeys (CJM), Business Process Management (BPM), AI, Automation (RPA), Low-code and Decision Management at the edge for enhanced business outcomes. His research and areas of personal experience focus on intelligent business processes, business modeling, real time data feedback with heterogeneous data types, business process management technologies, smart process collaboration for knowledge workers, process intelligence/optimization, AI applied to business policy/rule management, IoT and leveraging business applications in processes. Jim was a contributor to Forbes in AI. Jim is also one of the authors of BPM: The Next Wave. His latest book is Digital Transformation. Innovate or Die Slowly. Jim also co-authored recently a new book entitled “Practical Business Process Modeling and Analysis”. Jim’s personal blog is approaching two million hits to date. Jim is also a well known digital and traditional artist. His recent adventures include songwriting. He is revisualizing his art and marketing his music with generative AI.

WWW: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/people/jimsinur/
WWW: http://www.james-sinur.com/
WWW: http://jimsinur.blogspot.com
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Twitter: @JimSinur

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

There are a number of skills that BPM folks could pick up as there are many in the middle of digital evolution assisted by AI, but my top seven would be the following:

Journey Mapping for Customers, Employees and Partners including touchpoint analysis and persona creation that crosses internal functional stovepipes. Outside-in Thinking.

Embedded Advanced Analytic and Visualization Capabilities. Process plus big, fast and dark process/data mining is growing to be more important. Decision Models and Intelligent Management Cockpits will become more important as they integrate with process models. Strategic and situational analysis can be helpful in guiding agents and processes.

Agentic AI, Adaptive, Smart and Goal Driven Processes (often in Case Management and also Explicit Rule enabled) guided by guardrails and by process/data mining with real time feedback. Concentrating on Agents inside and outside a process or process snippets. Snippets and RPA bots are often candidates for converting into agents. Get ready for specialty agents such as broker agents.

AI Productivity Focused looking for opportunities to add automation or more smarts like Generative AI. Machine learning, Deep Learning and 17 other AI technology tributaries. See the 20 AI tributaries by clicking here: https://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2023/11/ai-tributaries-types-for-2024.htm

Cognitive Collaboration for Knowledge Workers Intense Processes or Cases. AI Assistance for process resources is on the move right now. Leveraging learning AI software and Agents for knowledge building and simulating potential outcomes. Having Skills to interact and guide AI in an interactive fashion will be key.

Signal and Pattern Detection at the edge (often needed for agility, IoT and business strategy). IoT integration is a new emerging theme. This can be taken to the level of digital twins and by merging control on the edge with central control.

Business Professional Process creation, adaptation, and optimization by leveraging lite BPM/workflow, Process/Data Mining utilizing Low code and generative AI.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

While there are no skills that one should drop, there are several that are considered common and receding. My top three would be the following:

Central Control Only approaches with siloed skill sets. More lateral thinking is and collaborative control is needed today.

Water Fall Only project methods are taking a second seat to incremental development leveraging Generative AI, RPA and rapid experimentation. We are living in an emergent world with emergent responses required.

Large blocks of dumb frozen code are giving way to smart and instrumented components, micro services and late binding rules guided by constraints. Turn dumb code into adaptive agents where possible.

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Roger Tregear

Roger Tregear spends his working life talking, consulting, thinking, presenting, recording, and writing about the analysis, innovation, improvement, and management of business processes. He helps organizations improve performance.
As Principal Advisor at TregearBPM Roger provides business process management consulting, training, and coaching services. 36 years’ experience as a business, management, and IT consultant means that he has well-developed insights into business improvement and problem resolution.
Roger’s practice and client base are global with assignments completed in Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Jordan, Namibia, Nigeria, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, UK, and USA.
Roger writes, presents, and records on many topics related to process-based management. That material can be accessed via https://bit.ly/TregearBPM_Resources.

WWW: https://www.tregearbpm.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @rogertregear

What advice would you give organization leaders who want to start managing processes intentionally in 2026?

Do This:

Identify the organization’s processes in a hierarchical format (process architecture). This is not hard to do and has two important effects. Provides a coherent context for understanding the organization’s processes. Promotes understanding of the key principles of process-based management.

Select a small number of high-impact processes and use these to establish and demonstrate active process management. For many organizations there will be 20-30 high-impact processes. You might start by selecting just three demonstration processes.

Design and implement effective process governance. Assign Process Owners (PO) to the demonstration processes. Establish support arrangements for these new POs. Clearly communicate the need for, and practice of, process governance.

For the demonstration processes identify process KPIs (PKPIs) and related targets. Make sure there are viable data collection mechanisms.

Establish the data collection, analysis, and reporting cycle. Look for actual or emerging problems. Search for other opportunities for performance improvement. Repeat endlessly.

Create and execute a whole-of-organization communications plan to share the theory and practice of active process management. Communicate the plans, successes, and failures. Deal with fears, uncertainties, and doubts throughout the organization.

Deliver proven, valued, business benefits. Encourage engagement.

Prepare to survive success, i.e. dealing with (many) more business units asking for active process management support and guidance.

Regularly review the process of process management and improvement. Make it the organization’s most effective process. Imagine the impact of that!

Plan to appear in BPM Tips next year as an exceptional example of active process management!

Don’t Do This:

Don’t just focus on the processes that self-select by being broken or difficult. They may be important but are they the processes that can provide the highest return?

Don’t try to manage “all your processes”. You can’t do it — there are thousands of them — and the good news is you don’t need to.

If starting the process-based management journey, avoid the temptation to start with lots of processes to actively manage. Better to demonstrate success with 3 than failure with 30.

Process documentation is important but challenge the business/operational purpose before any documentation effort is started. What’s the problem the documentation will fix? Avoid the insanity of “we will model all our processes”. Document just in time, not just in case.

Don’t underestimate the degree of change involved in moving to process-based management. Cross-functional management is vital and can be challenging for some people and organizations.

Don’t take the ‘easy’ path and ‘assign’ existing functional KPIs to processes. Put the functional KPIs aside and design effective process KPIs (PKPIs) and targets (and measurement methods).

Don’t allow the organization to fall in love with the process artifacts it creates and waste time admiring them at the expense of using them to deliver proven, valued, business benefits. Realize innovative and productive opportunities. Fix — better yet, anticipate and avoid — real problems.

Don’t give up.

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Roland Woldt

Roland Woldt is a well-rounded executive with 25+ years of Business Transformation consulting and software development/system implementation experience, in addition to leadership positions within the German Armed Forces (11 years).

He has worked as a Team Lead, Engagement/Program Manager, and Enterprise/Solution Architect on many projects. Within these projects, he was responsible for the full project life-cycle, from shaping a solution and selling it, to setting up a methodological approach through design, implementation, and testing, up to the roll-out of solutions.

In addition to this, Roland has managed consulting offerings throughout their life-cycle, from definition, delivery to update, and had revenue responsibility for them. This also included the stand-up and development of consulting teams, and their day-to-day management. Roland worked as a Vice President at iGrafx, Director in KPMG’s Advisory, as a Practice Director at Software AG/IDS Scheer, and as a project manager at Accenture.

WWW: “What’s Your Baseline?” podcast
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How do AI and other trends impact the way organizations manage and run their processes?

The topic of AI is cooling down a bit these days, it seems (good, because it is overhyped to the degree that I roll my eyes when I see the next “AI expert” telling me that everything is changing on LinkedIn. I just hope that the bubble will not explode (to a degree that makes the dot.com or housing bubble look tiny comparatively), but rather that there will be a controlled release of hot air.

Let’s call things what they are – AI is a form of process automation. Nothing more, nothing less.

Yes, it has some advanced capabilities, like learning from previous process executions, or having more autonomy in orchestrating things in a workflow, but it is still “just automation” and not your “new coworker” or any other anthropomorphic nonsense (“If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, …”).

So, with that out of the way, I see a few things that are relevant for BPM practitioners in regards to AI:

There will be more AI features in every software and vendors will stress this until it becomes “normal” and is not a distinguishing feature anymore. This will be true for process management software as well (I am including the subdiscipline of mining here) , but the quality for the foreseeable future will be the one of “little helpers.”
If you expect to see a full blown analysis or simulation on the press of a button (or prompt), then you will be disappointed.

AI will have a bigger impact when it comes to automation. Here I see the biggest potential in orchestration and executing the “dummy tasks” that cost a lot of time today. Do I think that you can “fire and forget” processes and replace what you do today (and the humans involved included)? No, and I am not sorry to disappoint you.

But this also means that you need to get the basics of process management right – understand and optimize processes before automation, creating simulations for business cases, describe your intended changes in solution designs, and monitor the process execution, while keeping the risk & compliance topics always in mind.
I would love to see process groups mature into these higher-levels of maturity, but it seems that we are still discussing how to describe what we do, instead of aiming for CMMI 4 or 5 levels of maturity (note to everyone in the former camp: BPMN won, don’t try to reinvent the wheel, go and improve things higher in the stack).

So, things change and stay the same as they’ve always been

What are the skills, techniques, behaviors, and attitudes that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2026?

I hope that 2026 will be the year when data-driven analysis will finally take off. Gartner rated Process Mining as “early mainstream” in their Enterprise Automation hype cycle earlier this year, which means that it is in the 20-50% addressable audience for this approach … and this means these are people who have never heard about mining at all, so don’t confuse them with “object-centric mining” or any other terms that are “hot” in our bubble these days. Stick to the basics.

I find it astonishing how many organizations still “fly blind” when running their organizations and don’t measure or even just monitor what they are doing. Process Mining is becoming an affordable commodity where you don’t have to pay an arm and a leg to get process-oriented visibility into what is really going on in your organization – and not only what your SMEs know or want to tell you.

If I could dream even more, I would love to see more collaboration (not only of SMEs in mining projects, which you will need for sure), but also in the full process lifecycle that then will include things like a central repository, strategic analysis of capabilities and finding improvement areas systematically, or process simulation.
And, of course, I would love to see more collaboration between the practitioners in real life. It seems that there are some great initiatives of Meetups in Germany for example, but I have not found anything similar in my neck of the woods, unfortunately.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

I am biased because I published two books -Successful Architecture Implementation and Successful Process Mining Projects- last year. And I run the “What’s Your Baseline”?” podcast together with j-m@whatsyourbaseline.com and the occasional co-hosts (thanks caspartcjans@gmail.com and matus.mala@gmail.com so far) for 4.5 years by now. And there is more to come in 2026 (IYKYK

If you want to learn more, please head over to whatsyourbaseline.com.

But in general I think it is important to learn data analysis skills as a BA. And the one tool that I really like is KNIME (knime.com) – it allows you to create workflows for data analysis or preparation of process mining logs without the need for coding in a “self documenting” way. And the folks in that community are super helpful (in the forums) and also have free-of-charge training for different roles on the website.
And did I mention that it is open-source? The perfect tool IMHO.

Lastly, there are also some basics to be learned, and if you are brand new here and want to know what that whole process thing is all about and how you can describe them, I recommend Zbigniew’s BPMN course on Udemy of course

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I mentioned it above, but I think that data analysis in the context of mining and simulation will become more relevant, and there will be some improvements on the technology front as well. My hunch is that by the end of the year the majority of tool vendors will have enabled object-centric data sets in their tools, so you will have to change how you do step 3 of my approach to Process Mining. This will come with some challenges and complexities (not at least based on the fact that your data structure and governance in your organization might be a mess) that you will have to overcome.

But otherwise I think the fundamentals of describing your processes, analyzing them, automating processes, predicting future performance, and monitoring the realization of everything does not change. Why should it?

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Books for people interested in business process management (BPM)

Zbigniew — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 16:30:04 +0000

Nearly 3 years have passed since my last post about BPM books plus I had a chance to notice few more interesting ones while writing a book about BPM myself So, I wanted to share with you updated and extended list of books which I would recommend to anyone interested in business process management.

Books about BPM in general

Business Architecture: Collecting, Connecting, and Correcting the Dots (by Roger Burlton)

Business Process Change: A Business Process Management Guide for Managers and Process Professionals 4th Edition (by Paul Harmon)

Business Process Management Cases Vol. 2: Digital Transformation – Strategy, Processes and Execution (by Jan vom Brocke, Jan Mendling, and Michael Rosemann)

Business Process Management: Profiting From Process (by Roger Burlton)

Elements (by Roger Tregear)

Faster Cheaper Better: The 9 Levers for Transforming How Work Gets Done (by Michael Hammer and Lisa Hershman)

Fundamentals of Business Process Management (by Marlon Dumas, Marcello La Rosa, Jan Mendling, and Hajo A. Reijers)

Handbook on Business Process Management 1. Introduction, Methods, and Information Systems and Handbook on Business Process Management 2. Strategic Alignment, Governance, People and Culture (by Jan vom Brocke and Michael Rosemann)

Holistic Business Process Management: Successful with BPMN 2.0 and OCEB 2 Fundamental (by Serge Schiltz)

OCEB 2 Certification Guide: Business Process Management – Fundamental Level (by Tim Weilkiens, Christian Weiss, Andrea Grass, and Kim Nena Duggen)

Process Precepts: Conversations about the process of management (by Roger Tregear)

Reimagining Management: Putting process at the center of business management (by Roger Tregear)

White Space Revisited: Creating Value through Process (by Geary Rummler, Alan Ramias, and Richard Rummler)

Books about process modeling
BPMN Quick and Easy Using Method and Style: Process Mapping Guidelines and Examples Using the Business Process Modeling Standard (by Bruce Silver)

Real-Life BPMN (4th edition): Includes an introduction to DMN (by Jakob Freund and Bernd Rücker)

Workflow Modeling. Tools for Process Improvement and Applications Development (by Alec Sharp and Patrick McDermott)

plus additionally DMN Method and Style: 3rd edition, with DMN Cookbook (by Bruce Silver)

Books about change management
While those books do not cover process management directly, they can be very useful source of inspiration, interesting techniques and great stories you can use in your BPM initiatives.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (by Chip and Dan Heath)

Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity (by Charles Duhigg)

Do you have any more recommendations? Let me know in comments!

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BPM Skills in 2019 – Hot or Not

Zbigniew — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 18:13:27 +0000

Chances are you have big plans for this year. But how to make those plans turn into reality?

Even brightest idea does not transform into results without:

a) Good old-fashioned hard work

b) Knowledge what to do and how to do it.

I cannot help you with point a, but for point b…

As in previous years I prepared for you answers from experts about hot skills for process/automation professionals.

If you want to get more context take a look also at the 2018, 2017 (plus part 2), and 2016 version of this post.

You may also enjoy predictions for 2019 from top influencers at BPM.com.

Which BPM skills will be hot in 2019?

Below you can find answers from 20+ BPM experts. You can either read everything or use the navigation below. Enjoy!

Lloyd Dugan
Marlon Dumas
Ian Gotts
Barbara Hodge
Cristian Ivănuș
Emiel Kelly
Mathias Kirchmer
Harald Kühn
Bob Larrivee
Holly Lyke-Ho-Gland
John Mancini
Connie Moore
Juergen Pitschke
Brian Reale
Adrian Reed
Pedro Robledo
Michal Rosik
Pramod Sachdeva
Suresh Sambandam
Phil Simpson
Jim Sinur
Shik Sundar
Keith Swenson
Miguel Valdés-Faura
Leslie Willcocks

Now, let’s dive into the answers.

Lloyd Dugan

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

Modeling skills remain key, but BPMN is still key as it has new life in describing the procedural/algorithmic business logic being automated as first-gen RPA. (In first-gen RPA, existing applications are re-purposed as more efficient STP processing sequences, avoiding the need for more invasive and disruptive refactoring.) However, BPMN as the dominant modeling language is giving ground to DMN (and a bit to CMMN) as more of the spectrum of structured vs. unstructured business processes are addressed by BPM practitioners. (Integrated modeling with all 3 languages is also gaining ground, as the effort between the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Mayo clinic, and various academic institutions showcases this in health care situations.) Model management skills are emerging as key, in which business processes in an enterprise can have both standard forms and field-level variants, all of which are to be understood together. Grounding in Business Architecture disciplines is also a key skill nowadays, requiring BPM practitioners to know how to create/apply value streams, capability maps, and customer journey maps that cross-reference process models as part of BPM work.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Books and training courses are available for all of these skill sets, but supporting tools required some savvy to find. Only a handful of process modeling tools support all 3 standards, and pocess model management is still only enabled by a subset of the process modeling tools out there. BPM aggregator sites as well as vendor sites are rich sources of best practices, available webinars, etc. for learning these skills. Business Architecture skills really require some training, or apprenticing at the side of actual Business Architects.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

BPM skills are still relevant and practical, but DMN (and, to a lesser extent, CMMN) are increasingly more relevant and practical (especially as use becomes more commonplace). As always, BPM as a discipline requires analytical skill sets at least as much as those required by the automation engines. However, as these engines are increasingly “low coding”, meaning that more and more of the design work is less and less development on technical developer skill sets, the BPM practitioner will be increasingly pulled into automation design work. Work with RPA will drive this extension even further, but more work with the technology needs to occur for critical masses of best practices to accumulate in sufficient quantities to make this skill set practically applicable.

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Prof. Marlon Dumas

Marlon Dumas is Professor of Software Engineering at University of Tartu, Estonia where he leads a team of 15 researchers focused on Business Process Management (BPM). Previously, he was faculty member at Queensland University of Technology and visiting researcher at SAP Research, Australia, where he led several BPM-related applied research projects. Prof. Dumas has provided consultancy and training to a dozen organizations in Australia and the Baltics. He is co-inventor of six granted US/EU patents in the field of BPM and co-author of the textbook “Fundamentals of Business Process Management”, now used in more than 100 universities worldwide.

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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

Broad-ranged data science skills have become an essential wrench in the toolbox of process analysts. In the past two years, process mining and predictive process monitoring techniques have proven their value in a wide range of industries. Mastering these techniques is becoming imperative.

Strong competition from lean and highly specialized post-startup companies are a major challenge for traditional players (fintech, insurtech, agritech, etc.). A key advantage of traditional players is their ability to offer integrated and broad-ranged products. Skills in business process integration are likely to become valuable in 2019 and beyond. The need for integration is one of the key drivers behind robotic process automation. Companies need to glue together multiple (legacy) systems and break across silos faster than what can be achieved with full-scale IT integration projects. Skills in design and development of proactive services will be particularly valuable in the coming years.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

First of all, in these times of rapid change, it is important to get the foundations right. Harmon’s Business Process Change, Franz and Kirchmer’s Value-Driven Business Process Management, vom Brocke and Rosemann’s Handbook of Business Process Management, and (sorry for the self-promotion) the Fundamentals of BPM, are references worth keeping at hand. Davenport’s recent writings on AI and robotic process automation, particularly those based on case studies, are a good complement to keep up with ongoing trends.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

In the past two years, blockchain technology has been touted as a possible solution to long-standing cross-organizational business process integration problems. However, it appears that the current generation of blockchain technology will take a few more years of refinement to fulfill its promises. Skills in cross-organizational process integration using blockchain might be useful in future, but they will not be broadly applicable in the medium-term.

Big Data and AI have fallen victims of over-hype. Big Data skills are needed, but in relatively specialized settings. AI skills (beyond machine learning skills for predictive analytics) might become useful for process automation in a few years time, but again they will not be broadly applicable in the medium-term. Let’s hope that the over-hyping of AI will not result in a backslash as it did in the late 80s. There is a lot of latent value in the emerging generation of AI technology (e.g. chatbots), but due to its complexity, AI technology needs incremental adoption driven by a long-term vision.

We should never forget that process automation (and this is particularly true of AI-driven automation) is never total nor does it come for free. It comes with exception handling costs, contingency management costs, maintenance costs, integration costs, flexibility loss, etc. The cracks of automation are wider than we think. Those who master the skill of filling these cracks will be in a strong position to deliver value in their companies in the coming 5 years.

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Ian Gotts

Ian is a founder of Elements.cloud, tech advisor, investor, speaker and author.

Elements.cloud helps customers clean-up, document and build their app implementations, focused on Salesforce. But valid for any low code app platform, esp as the process mapping is free, for ever, for everyone.
WWW: https://medium.com/@Q9ELEMENTS
WWW: elements.cloud
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

Business analysis, critical questioning, challenging status quo (esp at senior level). Digital transformation is more revolution than evolution. Great read: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/why-digital-transformation-is-now-on-the-ceos-shoulders

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Get the big picture, think about how your industry can transform, reengineer from the customer perspective, understand industry drivers and compliance, follow @iangotts !! BTOES conference, TED talks.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Understanding different technical standards UML, BPMN, DMN. RPA and AI are still emerging so practical skills are not very usable and standard/approaches are still evolving…. wait and see how they turn out.

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Barbara Hodge

Barbara Hodge is SSON’s Global Editor, and has been with the organization since 2000, having joined to launch Shared Services News. She is now responsible for SSON’s online portal content, including industry reports, case studies, surveys, interviews, etc. – as well as everything else that makes SSON the most trusted space for practitioners from around the world.
Barbara uses her extensive industry knowledge and connections to provide a unique perspective on the latest trends and developments across the SS&O landscape. She is the voice of ssonetwork.com, SSON’s online content portal, and she regularly conducts interviews with key industry figures to ensure SSON is a one-stop shop for shared services and outsourcing resources.
Prior to joining SSON, Barbara was Editorial Director at Armstrong Information, a London-based specialist publishing firm, with responsibility for launch and editorial content management for a number of management journals, including corporate communication, change management and business process reengineering. She started her career with Deutsche Bank Capital Markets in London.

WWW: http://www.ssonetwork.com
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Twitter: @ssonetwork
Twitter: @abrakabarbara

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

The trend this year is toward Centers of Excellence as the key levers of process productivity and process performance. According to SSON’s 2019 industry survey, more than two thirds of shared services have chosen to set up COEs.
In addition, automation is of course a critical strategy and is fast becoming “the way business is being done”. This means that processes are becoming more reliable, cost-effective, and standardized with less deviation.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

SSON online (www.ssonetwork.com) It is the most trusted online resource for executives tasked with process performance. As such we host webinars, white papers, networking activities at our conferences around the world, and various other opportunities to share best practices across the industry.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

One trend that is certainly being hyped up, although not without reason, is the appetite for evolved intelligent automation solutions such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. These types of skills [i.e. automation centric] will become significantly more important. Connected to this will be skilled around data analytics that emerged from automation. However, to answer your question more correctly, the traditional functional skills will perhaps become proportionately less important as automation takes over rules-based work, and centers of excellence hone functional and process-based expertise. While additional “process expertise” is therefore taken over by technology, humans can shift their attention to value adding analytics based competencies.

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Cristian Ivănuș

Cristian Ivanus is a BPM Solutions Architect & RPA Practice Lead at NTT DATA Romania.

Cristian is also managing the Romanian ABPMP Chapter.

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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

I consider that along the years, BPM practitioners should learn continuously and improve techniques from the real projects. BPM practitioners should be able to understand both business and technical aspects of this management discipline having in mind the actual trends in the global business, so called “digital transformation”.

Digital transformation roadmap of any company should include, in my opinion, a dedicated stage for describing and documenting existing processes in the business followed by clear plans for automation using BPM Software, Robotic Process Automation or other software tools and techniques for improving the quality of the business and getting more value.

In the list of mandatory skills for BPM practitioners I would include:
– Process discovery skills.
Because understanding BPM concepts is not always formalized in many companies, prior to any initiative, people who are part of the process (process owners, process controllers, performers and any other roles involved along the pathway of the process), awareness session should be the entry point in the project. The aim of this session is to create a common understanding of the processes amongst the participants. At the end of this session, people should be able to define the list of the processes of the company organized in three categories (core processes, support processes and management processes).

– Process analysis skills
Process analysis is one of the most important skills that must be demonstrated by BPM practitioners because the quality of the analysis is the key factor for identification of optimization or improvement initiatives. Main tool for analysis is the direct interview with the process participants. Process analyst should have the ability to “extract” from interlocutors appropriate details for modeling the process, because the aim is to create the abstract representation of the process steps and the interfaces between different other processes. Another tool required in the process analysis phase is a modeling tool. Personally, I am using BPMN 2.0 for process modeling because using this standard it is possible to identify and represent process details at the most detailed level.

Apart from the analytical and technical skills, process analyst should have few behavioral skills like patience, ability to listen and empathy. This will create an invisible link between process analysts and process participants.

– Lean and/or Six Sigma skills.
In many cases, lean and/or six sigma skills will help practitioners to identify deep process problems applying specific techniques like: identify waste, apply root cause analysis for process problems, use experimental solution design, measurement and control of the process variations, etc.

These advanced tools should be chosen when traditional improvements techniques are not applicable.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

There is no a comprehensive list of resources that can be used. There are a lot of excellent books that may be used as a reference for learning or completing the skills. Amongst these books (the list is not exhaustive, of course) I would recommend:
– Business Process Management: Practical Guidelines to Successful Implementations by John Jeston;
– Fundamentals of Business Process Management by Marlon Dumas, Marcello La Rosa, Jan Mendling and Hajo A. Reijers;
– BPMN 2.0 by Thomas Allweyer;
– Business Analysis by James Cadle, Malcom Eva, Keith Hindle & others.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I would say that skills are evolving. The complexity of the businesses requires a deep understanding of the methodological framework for providing appropriate solutions for business processes improvements.

Combining business skills with vision about appropriate technology solution that may be applied, will offer any BPM initiative the satisfaction for better and performant processes.

The essential skills enumerated in the previous section requires discipline, rigor and tenacity but offers a huge professional satisfaction when measuring the results of the solutions applied for business improvements.

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Emiel Kelly

Emiel has been working as a trainer and consultant for vendors of software like BPM tooling, since 1999. He also started his own initiative, Procesje.nl, a valuable source of practical and common sense information about Business Process Management and how to avoid blindly following the trends.
Emiel is known from his practical and unorthodox approach to BPM.
He is also a contributor to bpm.com where he is a very active participant of discussion forums. You can also find lots of his both informative and entertaining tweets on Twitter.

WWW: http://procesje.blogspot.nl
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

Processes (and the management of them) brings a lot of aspects of an organization together. I’ve seen a lot of organizations where a lot of separate initiatives work on the same processes without talking to each other, Think about Lean, Datamanagement, Building new systems, Compliance, etc. Sometimes they are even counterproductive.

To me the most important BPM skill is bring those initiatives together, Make organizations understand that working on the same processes from different inititiatives is the new sub uptimization. It’s like making your car very fast by tuning the engine but forget to adjust the suspension and brakes.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Not specific, but any resource that helps you to understand what makes a process perform. And that’s not a picture of blocks and arrows,

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

As a BPM professional you have to worry about processes, not about BPM systems, They’re just a means to implement a process the way you want.

Of course it might be interesting to know about techniques like AI, RPA etc, but to me that doesn’t make you a BPM professional but an AI or RPA expert.

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Dr. Mathias Kirchmer

Dr. Kirchmer is a visionary leader, thought leader and innovator in the field of Business Process Management (BPM), successfully integrating business and technology initiatives. He has combined his broad business experience with his extensive academic research to deliver pioneering management approaches that have proven to be both, sustainable and provide immediate benefits.
Most recently, Dr. Kirchmer founded BPM-D, a company focused on enabling ongoing digital transformation and strategy execution through the discipline of BPM. Before he was Managing Director and Global Lead of BPM at Accenture, and CEO of the Americas and Japan of IDS Scheer, known for its ARIS Software.
Dr. Kirchmer has published 11 books and over 150 articles. He is affiliated faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and teaches regularly at several other universities. In 2004, he received a research and teaching fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
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WWW: http://bpm-d.com
Twitter: @mtki2006

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

Here are six key skills I see for 2019 and the following years in the field of business process management (BPM):

* Digital Transformation Management: Process management becomes the discipline of digital transformation management, leveraging new technologies as improvement approaches. Hence, BPM practitioners need to prioritize, scope, and execute digital transformation initiatives as well as manage the related value identification and realization. They need to provide the approach to align people, products and processes for the digital world. The BPM-Discipline has to be managed as the value-switch for digital business transformation.
* Focused Agile Process Improvement: The volatile business environment requires a fast adaptive approach to improvements and transformation. However, there is also a big need to set clear direction and focus. The combination of agile principles, like the fast realization of process improvements in different stages, with top down approaches and supporting digital tools, such as process mining or prioritization applications, address those challenges. Integrated customer journey planning becomes a major component of process improvements to ensure an outside-in view and the right degree of standardization. Hence, a new combination of improvement skills is required.
* Value-driven Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPA continues to close the automation gap of traditional applications to deliver significant efficiency gains and other benefits. However, this requires a thought-through process-led approach that considers up and down-stream effects of (ro)bots and realizes their full potential. BPM practitioners need to provide skills for a systematic approach to realizing value through RPA, leveraging process modelling and repositories, process mining and other process management tools.
* Business Context for Artificial Intelligence (AI): More and more organizations are excited about the potential opportunities of AI and experiment with topics like Machine Learning (ML) or predictive analytics. In the coming months and years a key focus will be on identifying business scenarios to create best value through AI using appropriate data so drive the AI learning process. BPM practitioners need to provide process-led approaches to enable the outcome-driven use of AI.
* Integrated Process and Data Governance: Digital processes are only agile and deliver continued value if they are governed systematically across different departments. The new speed of digital execution accelerates negative effects of bad data quality. Therefore an integrated process and data governance becomes more and more crucial for successful digital processes. Skills do define appropriate governance processes, bodies, collaboration models and their integration into the organizations are very important.
* Hybrid Workforce Management: In the digital enterprise human and digital workforce co-exist. This requires an appropriate management approach to employees who have to resolve more and more often complex exception cases and specific individualized customer requirements. Standard processes are mainly supported through robots – that need to be adjusted and aligned with changing business environments, too. The resulting process-led hybrid workforce management is another key skill process practitioners need to provide.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

* A good overview over the topics mentioned is provided by industry organizations, like ABPMP or the BPM-Institute, and by specialized service firms like BPM-D. It is worth to compare training and education agendas to come up with the right mix.
* There are more and more eLearning offerings available covering at least some of those topics, such as the module “Strategy Execution in a Digital World: The BPM-Discipline” from BPM-D.
* A deeper and more comprehensive education in many of the areas mentioned is provided by academic institutions, such as Widener University (Master in Business Process Innovation) or the University of Pennsylvania (Program of Organizational Dynamics in the School for Arts and Sciences).
* In addition there are first books available covering those topics, such as “High Performance through Business Process Management – Strategy Execution in a Digital World” or “The Drivers of the Digital Transformation”.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I think many of the traditional statistical improvement tools and related traditional approaches, like e.g. Six Sigma, will continue to lose traction since their application in the office environment is too slow for the digital world.

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Harald Kühn

Dr. Harald Kühn is a member of the management board of the BOC AG. He is responsible for the product management and the related strategic aspects of BOC’s product portfolio. Dr. Harald Kühn works in the areas of metamodelling, BPM, EA and the usage of cloud technologies in these domains.

He is an author of over 20 publications about various aspects of BPM.

WWW: boc-group.com
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

Amongst many others, I see three areas in 2019 where BPM practitioners can create immediate value for their organizations:
1. Compliance
Many organisations need to show compliance to various standards and frameworks, depending on the markets they are acting in and in which type of industry they operate. In compliance initiatives such as data compliance, risk compliance, quality compliance, legal compliance etc., business process descriptions play a central role to provide input for an efficient compliance audit. By re-using existing work, BPM practitioners create immediate value for such initiatives reducing audit efforts and costs.

2. Business Transformation
By extending BPM with aspects from Design Thinking and Storytelling e.g. such as Scenes, BPM practitioners create value for business model decisions and business scenario designs. The same for the transformation of the application and technology architecture e.g. by using BPMN and Archimate in the context of Cyber Physical Systems.

3. Operational Excellence
State-of-the-art technology such as micro-service architectures, API-first approaches, mining and data science techniques allow the easy access to business-relevant runtime data, KPIs, execution frequencies etc. To combine these with business-level process definitions creates value and insight into process performance and gives the foundation for business process improvement e.g. using process simulation.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

– Open Model Initiative Laboratory (OMiLAB): http://www.omilab.org/
– Storytelling and Storyboards using Scenes: https://experience.sap.com/designservices/approach/scenes
– Archimate Forum: https://www.opengroup.org/archimate-forum
– Microservice Architecture: https://microservices.io/

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Any knowledge and experiences gathered in the past will influence decisions for the future. Therefore, even if specific techniques or technologies are not really relevant any more, they are important to evaluate and apply new upcoming techniques and technologies.

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Bob Larrivee

Bob Larrivee is the President and Founder of Bob Larrivee Consultancy. With over 34 years in the industry, Bob is a recognized expert in the application of advanced technologies and process improvement to solve business problems and enhance business operations and Technology Jounalist for Document Strategy.

During his career, Bob has developed many training courses, led many projects, and authored hundreds of eBooks, Industry Reports, Blogs, Articles, and Infographics. In addition, Bob has served as host and guest Subject Matter Expert on a wide variety of webinars, Podcasts, Virtual Events, and lectured at in-person seminars and conferences around the globe.

WWW: https://boblarriveeconsulting.com
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

I think that one of the most valuable skills for folks in BPM, is that of being able to accurately map business processes, their information interdependencies, and the actors in a way that aligns to the business, compliance, and customer experience. Once the current state is truly known – most organizations are not fully aware of what is really happening – process improvement and automation can take place. There are many who believe automated process mapping software is the answer but I believe it still takes human insight to answer the question of why things are currently being done in a certain way and identify the potential impact of process change, cultural change, and automation will have on the business and organization.

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Holly Lyke-Ho-Gland

Building on more than 10 years of business research and consulting experience, Holly Lyke-Ho-Gland is a principal research lead who conducts and publishes APQC research on process management and improvement, quality, project management, measurement, and benchmarking for APQC’s Process and Performance Management research team. Her research supports APQC members and clients across disciplines and centers on helping professionals and project managers solve business problems with strategy, process and measurement.

Holly regularly partners with other APQC research leads to look at improving the end-to-end business processes in areas such as procure-to-pay or order-to-cash where true improvement rests in the entire process versus one functional department. On a biannual basis, she conducts APQC’s extensive research survey and report on The Value of Benchmarking as well as annual surveys and reports on how organizations adopt and use the Process Classification Framework®.

WWW: https://www.apqc.org
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Twitter: @hlykehogland

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

According to both our 2018 and 2019 annual process and performance management priorities surveys BPM practitioners feel that their capabilities need to step up to stay relevant and provide value to their organizations. Namely they need to improve their change management skills and technological savvy:

1. Change management skills—process work, whether it’s tied to broad organizational initiatives or discrete process improvements, requires people change how they execute work. As shepherds of these projects BPM professionals need the tools and techniques necessary to engage people in changes and address resistance.

2. Technology capabilities—given that 75% of organizations are undergoing a digital transformation and BPM teams are tasked with supporting these initiatives, understanding technologies—what they are, what they can do, and just as importantly what they can’t do—is more important than ever before. Often the BPM teams work closely with IT to help identify when an improvement opportunity requires traditional process tools and/or could benefit from things like automation. Hence, BPM professionals need to understand the application of technologies, namely advanced analytics, data management, and process automation.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

There are several resources available for all these skills and the investment in them depends on the resources and budget you have available. For change management I would recommend seeing if your organization has an Organizational Change Management program or if your HR and Training groups have training available. If not, there are several great books and training programs available depending on the methodology you prefer—Kotter’s 8 Steps and PROSCI/ADKAR are two of my favorite methodologies.

For technology skills, these are much more accessible than they used to be. There are a wide variety of free courses available on all these topics. Many universities and groups like Coursera offer free programs on everything from data management to machine learning. I personally find these types of courses beneficial over books and articles because they are less academic and include lab work where you apply what you learn.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I don’t think that any skills are no longer relevant. Even in support of digital and new technology applications organizations still rely on BPM teams for traditional discovery, improvement, and re-engineering of processes. However, in many cases AI is not practically applicable yet. According to this year’s priorities survey only 26% of the organizations plan on investing in AI over the next 18 months. Most organizations are still working on getting their data house in order and building out their analytics capabilities and automation programs.

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John Mancini

John Mancini is the Chief Evangelist and Past President of AIIM. He is a well-known author and speaker on information management and digital transformation. As a frequent keynote speaker, John offers his expertise on Digital Transformation and the struggle to overcome Information Chaos. He blogs under the title Digital Landfill (http://info.aiim.org/digital-landfill), has more than 11,000 Twitter followers, 6,000 LinkedIn followers, and can be found on most social media as @jmancini77. He has published more than 30 e-books, the most recent being:
* Leveraging Deep Learning and Machine Learning Capabilities
* Integrating Content Services into Low Code Applications
* Enhancing Your RPA Implementation with Intelligent Information
* How does the Office 365 Revolution Impact Governance and Process Automation?
* Automating Governance and Compliance
WWW: http://www.aiim.org
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Twitter: @jmancini77

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

I think the key to creating value for BPM practitioners – both FOR and TO their organizations – is to understand the connections between BPM technologies and other enterprise systems. Some of the “connections” that I feel are particularly valuable:

* An understanding of the role that content and unstructured information plays as the fuel (or the “clog”) for business processes. The management and integration of this content cannot be treated as an afterthought.
* The connections that “big process” technologies like BPM have with tactical process improvement tools like Robotic Process Automation. Some view RPA as a replacement for BPM; I tend to see it as a complement to BPM. Each has their role, and understanding the connections between the two is a skill rising in importance.
* An understanding of the business process itself – and not just the technologies like BPM that help automate it – is increasingly important. As organizations have begun to look at their processes from the outside in rather than from an inside-out technology-centric perspective, it has created the need to view processes more holistically. And that means connections between processes. For example, the uber process of customer acquisition all the way through customer fulfillment is not a single process, but a system that connects multiple processes.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

When it comes to skills and resources, many know I have a long connection with AIIM, so I have a bias there. But in particular the annual Conference that AIIM does is a great place to explore the connections I mention above and the people charged with making those connections within their organizations. In addition, AIIM’s CIP (Certified Information Professional) is a great place to understand the broader world beyond BPM. At the heart of the CIP is this point – “The value-add for information technology in organizations is rapidly shifting from the technology per se to the stewardship, optimization, and application of the information assets themselves. It has changed how we think about enterprise information and IT – and changed how we think about the kinds of skills needed to adapt to these changes.”

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I don’t know that I think about particular skills as being irrelevant as I do particular mindsets. And by that I mean a technology-centric mindset rather than a business-centric one. If there has ever been a time in which the business needs to lead when it comes to technology strategy, it’s now.

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Connie Moore

As Senior Vice President of Research at Digital Clarity Group, Connie has unparalleled experience working with senior executives in business and IT, technology marketing, and government, from SMEs to large enterprises throughout the globe. She has managed international teams of analysts focused on a wide range of technologies such as social and collaboration, content management, business analytics, business software (e.g. ERP, CRM, HCM), and BPM suites. Her research encompasses business transformation, business process management, customer experience management, information management, the future of work, new business models and organizational change management. Connie is highly sought as a keynote speaker and conference chair on five continents. This year, she was honored by her peer group for thought leadership in business process transformation, adaptive case management and BPM software when she received the highly coveted Marvin Manheim Award from the Workflow and Reengineering Association (WARIA).

Prior to DCG, Connie was a Vice President, Principal Analyst and Research Director at Forrester Research for more than 20 years, where she pioneered new data-driven research on global Bring Your Own Technology trends, forecasted and defined the next generation of business suites, and drove innovative dialog among marketing, business process and IT senior executives about how to succeed at large-scale business transformation.

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WWW: http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com
Twitter: @cmooreclarity

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

Large-scale business transformation projects invariably require a multidisciplinary team comprising individuals who bring different tools, experiences, perspectives and insights to the table. This creates two immediate challenges for business process professionals that are typically steeped in Lean, Six Sigma and business process modeling:

1. In addition to their own expertise, BPM professionals often need to cross-train in their co-workers’ methodologies and tools so that everyone at least has a cursory knowledge of how the different approaches fit together across multi-faceted project teams.
2. Increasingly, the knowledge, methodologies and tooling that most business process practitioners possess isn’t sufficient—they also need to master new customer-centric skills and new technologies, such as robotic process automation, that continue to emerge.

Figure 1 shows the four broad disciplines/job titles that typically comprise a large business process project: 1) business stakeholder, 2) customer experience, 3) technology and 4) business process[i]. In keeping with the times, the new initiatives being launched may not even be called business process transformation efforts; they may instead be customer experience or digital transformation efforts. Or, just as easily, it could be called something else—say, next-generation customer service or an omnichannel initiative. The point we need to recognize is that while business process skills are still vitally important, a pure business process focus on largely internal processes may no longer be the organization’s top priority.

And that’s okay, because as every Lean practitioner knows, organizations must start with an outside-in customer viewpoint. In many organizations, it’s Chief Customer Officer (or some other CXO title) who drives business process change as part of a larger customer experience or digital experience transformation initiative. Process professionals need to recognize and accept this reality.

So what new skills needed are needed? Business transformation practitioners must double down on new areas, depending on where they report:

* Business stakeholders are increasingly asked to help with digital transformation efforts, which may require learning about voice of the customer and customer journey mapping, in addition to their more traditional role of providing business stakeholder insights. And independent of what tools they need to master, these professionals will be asked to look at transformation from the customer’s perspective rather than concentrating on more traditional internal improvements.

* Customer experience practitioners of all stripes are in high demand as companies develop and implement their digital transformation roadmap. These individuals, who may be part of a small CX group or embedded within business or IT, help develop a firm’s digital transformation strategy by conducting voice of the customer sessions, creating customer journey strategies and completing journey maps. This can be a tall order; organizations may have 200-500+ customer journeys. Interestingly, there are strong parallels between customer journey mapping and business process modeling. Inevitably, these types of tools will increasingly overlap. Put simply, journey maps look at processes from the customer’s vantage while process modeling typically analyzes the “to be” for internal steps. Some organizations already use process modeling tools for journey mapping, which illustrates how the different disciplines are now overlapping from a skills and training perspective. For this reason, customer experience teams must work more closely with process professionals, and vice versa—and they will need to learn each other’s tooling. Additionally, some power-users in the business may need to learn how to create scripts for robotic process automation.

[i] Organizational change management is vitally important in any transformation initiative and these practitioners may report into their own group, or the skill set may be found elsewhere in other groups. Most commonly, IT or HR is where change management professionals report if there is not a separate team. For more on organizational change management, see Organizational Change Management: An (Emerging) Core Competency for Customer Experience Management.

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Juergen Pitschke

Juergen Pitschke is Partner and Managing Director at Process Renewal Group Deutschland.

Juergen has more than 25 years industrial experience about enterprise modelling and the realization of Business and IT Architectures. He is recognized for his deep knowledge and the systematic use of visual standard notations and of different frameworks für the design of an Enterprise Architecture. His knowledge is often sought in the field of Business Process Management and Decision Management.

His focus are model-based approaches for enterprise design and their practical use. Clients value his abilities to explain concepts, to help teams to adopt and successfully apply such methods, and to guide projects successfully.

He is author of the book “Unternehmensmodellierung für die Praxis”. He translated the Business Process Manifesto, the Decision Management Manifesto, and the RuleSpeak® – approach into German.

His customers include companies as Kuehne+Nagel (AG & Co.) KG, Boehler Edelstahl or organizations like the Federal Office of Police in Switzerland.

WWW: http://processrenewal.de
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Twitter: @jpitschke

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

Modelling is still an essential skill in Business Process Management and other areas. This statement stays valid.

You describe different subjects for very different purposes, goals. You need different notations, not only standard notations for this. The important thing is that the chosen notations fit the purpose.

Important is “Architecture” to bind together the different views. There is a difference between architecture in general and a real “business architecture”.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

For decision management the best book is still: “Real-world Decision Modeling with DMN” by James Taylor and Jan Purchase.

For Business Process Management “Reimagining Management: Putting Process at the Center of Business Management” by Roger Tregear is still one of my favorites.

As “Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution” by J.W.Ross and D.Robertson is a long time classic and knowledge source.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I wouldn’t discuss to long about advantages/disadvantages of single notations or a single approach.

For the question of Architecture the important thing is not certification in one of the approaches, Knowledge is needed in any case (and healthy mind).

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Brian Reale

Brian Reale is a serial entrepreneur. Brian founded a telecommunications company in 2000 called Unete Telecomunicaciones which provided, voice, data, and satellite services in Latin America. Brian sold Unete to a publicly traded US telecom company in 2000. Brian was also the co-founder of Spotless LLC, an entertainment technology company that developed projection mapping technology for major live entertainment industries.

Brian has been involved in thge workflow and BPM industry since he co-founded ProcessMaker in 2000. ProcessMaker is a leading open source BPM suite which has just released its 4th generation product – a modern lightweight BPM designed for both human tasks and microservices orchestration. The ProcessMaker BPMS has been recognized with numerous awards and pushes the bounds of BPM with a fundamental belief that process management can be simple, elegant, and easy to use.

Brian graduated magna cum laude from Duke University in 1993 and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in linguistics in Ecuador in 1994.

WWW: https://www.processmaker.com
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Twitter: @breale
Twitter: @processmaker

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

1. ML/AI– Machine learning will hit its stride in 2019 and will start to really drive sales for many BPM vendors. Think of AI in much the same way that you would Decision Management, and you will understand why it has the power to represent a big burst of new sales for BPM vendors. ML services from the big vendors like AWS, IBM, and Microsoft are now highly capable. These ML services can add extraordinary and immediate value around processes related to contract management and much more. Wrapping this services in a process context is the best way to deliver the service in a seamless and efficient manner within an organization. BPM professionals just need to understand where to look and what problems to solve with ML/AI.

2. RPA – RPA, of course, is overhyped. Still, it is gaining ground. RPA will not destroy BPM (Believe it or not: I heard an RPA vendor stand up at a conference and claim this!). To the contrary, the two are complimentary. If RPA is being implemented in a company, then I know that they will need BPM. It is like seeing companies move to distributed microservices. These are signs that the ecosystem and business process landscape is more complex. Inevitably, this is good for BPM.

3. Interface Design – BPM vendors have done a horrible job with Customer experience. A few are starting to catch on and get better. Let’s face it, BPM has always been a bit old fashioned and stodgy. It is not surprising that it has lagged so far behind with regards to enabling and participating in driving customer experience. As we all know, the further you get away from the customer, the further away you get from the money. The risk is irrelevance. BPM vendors don’t want to be moved to the back office, and in many institutions this is where the CIO is headed. Both BPM vendors and CIOs need to swim upstream to become more relevant. The customer experience is first and foremost. BPM vendors that can truly add efficiency in the application development will thrive. Hint – on the interface side if you want to add value, you had better be low code.

4. Low Code – As everyone pushes to position their suite low code, a few things are going to happen. First, the world is going to be filled with clunky, cumbersome software products. Most of the low code attempts will evolve from bad to worse. Design tools will try to emulate everything that a developer can do in her IDE. As incomplete spec after incomplete spec gets developed, products will trap their users in worse and worse user experiences. Those that thrive will NOT try to sideline developers. They will find an artistic way to offer low code for business admins and a developer experience loved by developers.

5. Rules – Rules will continue to grow in importance. Rules is the gateway drug to AI and ML. They will grow in tandem.

6. Microservices and event-driven architectures – BPM practitioners need to understand that the world is moving to event driven architectures. As complexity and information increases, it makes sense that if BPM wants to continue to be the process glue, it needs to be a good listener. In other words, systems are producing data and events, and other systems will need to listen and handle massive volumes of transactions.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Online academies, vendor tutorials, and DIY tinkering are the best ways to learn these new skills. Oh, and, of course, download a modern stack open source bpm like ProcessMaker to test your concepts. As a company that makes an open source BPM, we believe in letting people explore and test and use. This is the best way to develop skills.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

As I said earlier, RPA will not replace BPM. It does offer a great toolset especially for dealing with some forms of repetitive tasks or missing APIs. However, 50% of RPA claims today are hype in my opinion. Many 2018 RPA buyers will express their dispair and disillusionment in 2019.

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Adrian Reed

Adrian Reed is a true advocate of the analysis profession. In his day job, he acts as Principal Consultant and Director at Blackmetric Business Solutions where he provides business analysis consultancy and training solutions to a range of clients in varying industries. Adrian is President of the UK chapter of the IIBA and he speaks internationally on topics relating to business analysis and business change. You can read Adrian’s blog at http://www.adrianreed.co.uk and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/UKAdrianReed.

WWW: http://www.adrianreed.co.uk
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

I think that if the last few years have taught us anything, it is that we live in an incredibly fast paced world. We’ve seen new consumer technology enter the market that would have seemed like science fiction only five or ten years ago, and there seems to be an increased social acceptance of this type of technology. Ten years ago, who would have thought that we’d be controlling our music, lights and even buying things with a voice assistant? Who would have thought that people would invite companies to listen to what goes on in our living rooms?

This is happening alongside lots of political change. Few experts predicted that Brexit would happen, and with just two months to go, nobody knows what Brexit will actually look like. UK-based organizations will have a relatively short time to adapt to whatever changes are imposed.

In an increasingly complex and fast-moving world, this (in my view) points towards two broad types of skills that we have as practitioners, that will be of increasing value. Firstly, anything that helps us achieve business agility, i.e. the ability for our organizations to sense and respond to opportunities and threats in their environments. This requires us to have strategic awareness of the context our organizations work in. We need to understand the mission and vision of our organizations, and we need to have techniques in our toolbox that enable us to analyze the external business environment. Managing internal processes is undoubtedly valuable, but these processes need to be fit and appropriate for the environments in which they operate! So I think the ability to look upwards, sideways as well as down into the detail of the process will become increasingly useful. Increased focus on strategic analysis become even more crucial than it is today.

Secondly, with the complexity of the environments that we are operating in becoming more complex, I believe elements of systems thinking are of more relevance than ever. It is so easy to make a process change in one area that causes unintended consequences elsewhere, and thinking holistically and systemically can help us to avoid this.

(For an overview of some systems thinking ideas, and their relevance, check out this webinar recording)

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

I think it really depends on the individual. Personally, I learn a great deal by attending conferences and also speaking to others. I also read and listen to a lot of audio books. Training courses are also an extremely valuable way of learning a lot in a short period of time. Additionally, I find it’s great to have a supportive network of colleagues and contacts. As a community we all learn from each other.

However, it is really easy to read a book, go on training, or attend a webinar and then not change our practice. It’s very easy to revert back to doing things the way we have always done them. So, in many ways, the most important thing is to have a plan for putting the new knowledge into practice.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I’m always reluctant to write-off skills as no longer relevant, as I think it really depends on context, and I think many of the ‘core skills’ do remain the same over time, albeit there are different pressures and business imperatives.

One thing that I tend to be skeptical of, is where particular technologies or IT systems are sold as the ‘solution’ to organizational problems. Where we have entire projects and programs that end up being about ‘implement system xyz’ rather than ‘achieve these outcomes and benefits’.

So, I think we need to continue to ask ‘what is the business benefit here?’ and ‘what are the business process impacts of the new technology that is proposed?’.

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Pedro Robledo

BPM Trusted Advisor, Professor and Industry Analyst, BPMteca & UNIR, Spain

Pedro Robledo is one of the most influential Spanish thought leaders in Process Management using BPM. He has been dedicated to promote industry awareness of Business Process Management in Spain and Latin America for over 20 years. Mr. Robledo is Director of BPM for Digital Transformation Master in Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (UNIR). As BPM Advisor, Consultant and Trainer, he helps Organizations in its Enterprise Architecture, BPMN Modeling, BPM and Digital Transformation initiatives. He is a frequent speaker and presenter at international BPM workshops and conferences. Since 2013, he participates as jury of the WfMC Awards for Excellence in BPM and Workflow. Mr. Robledo is currently an active participant in the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Research Group in UNIR. He holds a Bachelor of Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He writes his own blog about BPM and Digital Transformation.

WWW: pedrorobledobpm.blogspot.com.es
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Twitter: @pedrorobledoBPM

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

The digital disruption in all sectors requires the BPM discipline to address the process management of any organization that wants to survive in the digital era. Therefore, there is a real need for training in BPM. The market continues with the need for BPM professionals, and there is not enough professionals ready to join in the current and future projects. Gartner has published that global spending on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software is estimated to reach $680 million in 2018, an increase of 57 percent year over year, according to the latest research from Gartner, Inc. RPA software spending is on pace to total $2.4 billion in 2022. (https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-11-13-gartner-says-worldwide-spending-on-robotic-process-automation-software-to-reach-680-million-in-2018) Many RPA vendors are confusing the market, as they say that RPA can replace BPM, but there are important differences between RPA and BPM, and this is important to create value in any organizations. BPM is a discipline and RPA is software. BPM can use RPA to automate repetitive tasks where there is not human participation, or use bots to help to the human participant in one task. The BPM practitioners need to understand the BPM life cycle and what BPM discipline is and not to be focus only in BPM software or RPA software. Any company will have to define a BPM Office (or BPM CoE if they have years of BPM initiatives) and to include all roles (with internal or external people) required in the BPM Life Cycle to grow in the BPM maturity.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

The universities are providing BPM training for a few years, due to the current demand for certified training in this discipline and the possibility of employment for the student. The training provided is very varied from certain courses or seminars (included in undergraduate training), specific expert courses on BPM, master’s degrees with own or regulated degree, and some doctorate in BPM exceptionally. The regulated university education through a careful theoretical and practical training covers all the skills that a professional BPM needs. Given that Business Process Management is a field with a great professional output, investment in university training will have an important return for the student. In Albatian’s blog I published a list of universities that offer BPM studies in the world, ordered by type of online or face-to-face degree: https://albatian.com/en/blog-ingles/where-to-learn-bpm-in-the-university/

About books, the most important library of English Books is Future Strategies (http://www.futstrat.com/). For Spanish readers, BPMteca.com, focused on BPM books in Spanish. In my blog (http://pedrorobledobpm.blogspot.com.es/), I have some posts with bibliography by BPM topics.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

All the traditional BPM skills are relevant and they are applicable yet.

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Michal Rosik

Product Visionary & CPO, Minit

As Product Visionary for Minit, Michal defines the Research & Development direction for this process mining solution, develops close ties to the academic community in this area and evangelizes process mining benefits to enterprises worldwide. Michal previously lead Microsoft Consulting department in Siemens and was involved in several large enterprise projects as a consultant and project manager. In his free time, he is a passionate trail runner.

WWW: http://www.minit.io
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Twitter: @rosik
Twitter: @minit_io

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

The hype-drink recipe is easy:
1 shot of RPA
1 shot of DMN
3 drops of AI
splash of No Code
zest from ACM (Adaptive Case Management)

Put everything in a shaker with Ice Cubes (or your favorite music) and mix well.
Pour into the enterprise.
Drink wisely, it is a pretty strong mix.

Different skills and techniques have been pushing the boundaries of what enterprises are able to absorb in the last few years. Most of them being on their own and being considered a silver bullet for any problems you might think of. 2019 for me is more than ever about finding the proper mixture, right synergy between them, about finding how those, for most business users, abstract buzzwords might support each other for better utilization. There is a place for all of them, but not everywhere or anywhere.

In Minit we see that process mining cannot stand on its own as well and we strongly feel it is the right technology to help enterprises to absorb and leverage all their investments in techniques mentioned above. We work hard to help in these everyday fights.

And lastly, when you prepare your personal cocktail, do not underestimate the power of presentation. Visual storytelling is an equally important part of the process. So it’s no longer about the pure data, but also about the way how you visualize them – in other words “infographics instead of tables and charts”.

By the way, did I mention Blockchain? There is a reason why I didn’t.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Instead of listing books, articles and courses, that everyone is able to easily find on the internet, I would like to focus your attention on different vendors in those technological areas – most of them already provide academies, free e-books or full documentation. Do not fear to go through it, most of them give a very good insight into the technology and its benefits, instead of plain product walkthrough.

Absorb all of it, let it rest and use your creativity and common sense – lately, two most forgotten skills.

If not sure, listen to experienced professionals. Even though they might not be on the current hype wave, try to combine their past long-term experience with the new kids on the block.
History is repeating, isn’t it?

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Low hanging fruits have been already collected in many hype technologies, but no longer relevant is the overall approach of taking a hype, squeezing it a bit and throwing it immediately away.

If you want to do quality contemporary art, you must know how to draw.
The more experience you have, the more you can leverage everything new.

But if you want me to choose one tech stream, that is not practically applicable yet in the area of process mining in full power, I believe that Data Lakes did not say the last word yet.
And combined with AI, it sounds like a nice fusion.

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Pramod Sachdeva

Pramod Sachdeva is the Founder and Managing Director at Princeton Blue. Pramod has been an evangelist for Intelligent Automation using BPM, Low-code, RPA and AI technologies since he founded Princeton Blue 12 years ago. With over 30 years of business and technology consulting experience, Pramod brings tremendous knowledge to help clients navigate their digital transformation journey towards the ultimate goal of improving customer experience and operational efficiency. Princeton Blue is recognized by leading industry analysts as a thought leader in delivering intelligent automation solutions.

WWW: http://princetonblue.com
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Twitter: @princetonblue

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

While Robotic Process Automation (RPA) may be perceived as partially overlapping with Business Process Management (BPM), we find that they are more complimentary than competitive. One thing is clear – the underlying need for business process re-engineering and automation never goes away, so as the technologies evolve, we are given more automation options in our tool belt. Today, we use BPM and RPA together to automate use cases that could not be automated by either technology alone.

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Suresh Sambandam

Suresh Sambandam is the Founder and CEO of OrangeScape Technologies. He is an investor, speaker, and has few patents to his credit. He has been disrupting the BPM industry with KiSSFLOW.

WWW: https://kissflow.com
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Twitter: @sureshsambandam

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

One very important skill is being able to finely dissect the difference between processes, projects, and cases. Project management software has become completely mainstream now in terms of search volume, followed by process management and then by case management. However, there are very few practitioners out there who can give a clear definition of each one.

More importantly, there are a lot of people using the wrong software to try to manage these different types of work. BPM practitioners should be able to lead the way in not only helping to manage processes better, but define what is and is not best handled with BPM software.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Surprisingly, there are very few resources out there and learning these skills, especially when you add case management into the mix. Most of it is learned by talking with people on the ground and seeing the limitations they find with the first or most recent software tool they tried.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

AI will come into BPM in a big way in the next five years, but it’s not quite here yet. If you want to be on the extreme front edge, you can start to build skillsets, but they won’t be commercially viable for a few years.

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Phil Simpson

Phil Simpson is JBoss product marketing manager at Red Hat where he’s responsible for market positioning and messaging activities for JBoss Enterprise BRMS. Phil has extensive experience with business rules and BPM solutions. He led the product management function at an early business-rules pioneer and has held senior marketing roles at several leading technology companies. Prior to joining Red Hat, he was product manager for the data analytics firm Renesys and was a director at SeaChange International, Ironhead Analytics, and Rulespower. Phil holds a bachelor’s degree from Southampton University in the UK.

WWW: https://www.redhat.com
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Twitter: @RedHatNews

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

From a technology perspective, we are seeing a convergence of BPM, application development and cloud platforms to support a more diverse community of developers and business users. Most traditional BPM systems are moving in this direction – away from pure process management and towards more comprehensive digital automation, combining BPM with emerging technologies like RPA, AI/ML, low-code, etc. I think this has fairly significant implications for BPM practitioners, in that organizations are coming to view “BPM” in broader terms, needing a more diverse set of skills across a wider population of practitioners. In fact I think it’s fair to say that the term “BPM” is falling out of usage.

I think this presents a tremendous opportunity for BPM practitioners to learn skills that can contribute to an orderly adoption of these new technologies. Being able to understand where RPA is appropriate, and where not, for example, is highly valuable. Similarly, those who understand the capabilities and limitations of AI/ML solutions and can guide an organization through their application to business problems will be sought after.

And, of course, there’s Blockchain. 2019 may be the year that we come up with a usable Blockchain-based solution to enhance the integrity of business processes. Now might be the time to start learning about Blockchain!

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Traditional BPM skills are still relevant, although as I’ve suggested the term “BPM” is falling out of favor. I wouldn’t ‘unlearn’ anything, but look to augment your business architecture and process/decision modeling skills with an understanding of new technologies so that you can lead the way to more automated digital business.

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Jim Sinur

Jim Sinur is an independent thought leader in applying Digital Business Platforms (DBP), Customer Experience/Journeys (CJM), Business Process Management (BPM), Automation (RPA), Low-code and Decision Management at the edge to business outcomes. His research and areas of personal experience focus on intelligent business processes, business modeling, business process management technologies, process collaboration for knowledge workers, process intelligence/optimization, AI applied to business policy/rule management, IoT and leveraging business applications in processes. Jim is also one of the authors of BPM: The Next Wave. His latest book is Digital Transformation. Innovate or Die Slowly. Jim is also a well know digital and traditional artist.

WWW: http://www.james-sinur.com/
WWW: http://jimsinur.blogspot.com
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Twitter: @JimSinur

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

There are a number of skills that BPM folks could pick up as there are many coming out of the digital evolution, but my top seven would be the following:
1) Journey Mapping for Customers, Employees and Partners including touchpoint analysis and persona creation.
2) Embedded Advanced Analytic and Augmented Reality Capabilities. Process plus big and fast process/data mining is growing to be more important.
3) Adaptive and Goal Driven Processes (often in Case Management and also Explicit Rule enabled).
4) AI looking for opportunities to add automation or more smarts like Robotic Program Automation (RPA). Machine learning is hot and Deep Learning is starting to gain momentum.
5) Cognitive Collaboration for Knowledge Intense Processes or Cases. AI Assistance is starting
6) Signal and Pattern Detection (often needed for agility, IoT and business strategy). IoT integration is a new emerging theme
7) Merging Control on the Edge with Central Control. Decisions and actions at the edge is starting to emerge

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

While there are no skills that one should drop, there are several that are considered common and receding. My top three would be the following:
1) Central Control only approaches with siloed skill sets. More lateral thinking is and collaborative control is needed today.
2) Water Fall project methods are taking a second seat to incremental development, RPA and rapid experimentation,
3) Large blocks of dumb frozen code are giving way to smart components, micro services and late binding rules guided by constraints.

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Shik Sundar

Shik Sundar leads global sales and partnerships at Pipefy, the Lean Management Platform used by over 15,000 companies in 150 countries. Shik brings 10+ years of hyper-growth startup experience to Pipefy, across a diverse array of products such as mobile-first safety applications and digital marketing. Shik began his career in healthcare technology, having co-founded Benefitter (acquired by HealthMarkets) and leading sales at Adreima (acquired by nThrive). He holds a B.S. in Neuroscience from Emory University.
WWW: https://www.pipefy.com
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Twitter: @ShikSundar
Twitter: @Pipefy

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

Lean Management. Organizations need to optimize every step of their value chain. To achieve this, they need to able to reduce waste, increase visibility into processes and performance. In the past, BPM practitioners were focused on the most visible, core, high-volume processes. Today, executive management expects everyone in the organization who is responsible for a process to directly take ownership of it and commit to continuous measurable improvement. It’s important that BPM practitioners understand this and are ready to enable subject-matter experts in the organization to take control of their own processes and apply Lean principles.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

* Lean introductory short-course on Lynda: https://www.lynda.com/Business-tutorials/Lean/721919/771146-4.html
* Lean Thinking: Banishing Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation book by James P Womack
* Managing Workflow, the Lean Way article by John Shook,

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

BPM programming. As tools increasingly become more self-serve and user-friendly, it will become irrelevant for practitioners to train on esoteric notation and tool-specific programming.

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Keith Swenson

Keith Swenson is Vice President of Research and Development at Fujitsu North America and also the Chairman of the Workflow Management Coalition. As a speaker, author, and contributor to many workflow and BPM standards, he is known for having been a pioneer in collaboration software and web services. He has led agile software development teams at MS2, Netscape, Ashton Tate & Fujitsu. He won the 2004 Marvin L. Manheim Award for outstanding contributions in the field of workflow. Co-author on more than 10 books. His latest book, “When Thinking Matters in the Workplace,” explains how to avoid stifling creativity and enhance innovation through the appropriate use of process technology. His 2010 book “Mastering the Unpredictable” introduced and defined the field of adaptive case management and established him as a Top Influencer in the field of case management. He blogs at https://social-biz.org/.

WWW: https://social-biz.org
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Twitter: @swensonkeith

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

This biggest problem facing everyone today is the ability to tell truth from fiction. This is a long distance from BPM, however BPM is fairly settled science. We know how to automate business processes. What I still see demand for is support for knowledge workers. The public have begun to appreciate the need for non-automated solutions that support knowledge workers: case management. Not a new topic, but one that is now accepted, and anyone doing BPM today should refine their case management skills.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

We hold an Adaptive Case Management workshop every year: AdaptiveCM 2019 will be in Vienna Austria this year at the same place with the BPM conference. That is the only place where real research is being done on the cutting edge.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

SQL and relational database seems less important today: the no-SQL approaches just allow you to dump all the data in whatever format into the database, and then due to the sheer power of computing systems today, worry about the structure of the data later.

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Miguel Valdés-Faura

As Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, Miguel leads the charge in Bonitasoft’s mission: to democratize Business Process Management (BPM), bringing powerful and affordable BPM to organizations and projects of all sizes. Prior to Bonitasoft, Miguel led R&D, pre-sales and support for the BPM division of Bull Information Systems, a major European systems provider. Miguel is a recognized thought-leader in business process management and passionate about open source community building.

WWW: http://www.bonitasoft.com
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Twitter: @miguelvaldes

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

There is a big opportunity for BPM practitioners to lead transformative initiatives in which there is a better integration of robotic workforce and artificial intelligence into the coordination of humans, systems and workflows.

BPM will be more and more about delivering insights and predictions to process participants (customers or employees), assist improvements specialists with the identification of bottlenecks and process optimisations… and about making sure that processes, applications, robots and systems can reshape and adapt themselves as they run.

Embracement of continuous delivery engineering approach and container related-technologies (such as Docker and Kubernetes) in large organizations will continue to increase with the adoption of microservices, serverless and multi-cloud architectures. BPM practitioners should rely on platforms that allows them to do Iterative and incremental BPM implementations.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Neil Ward-Dutton of MWD Advisors (now at IDC) has always good insights on both technologies and the direction of BPM. I also recommend to read Rob Koplowitz of Forrester, Rob Dunie of Gartner, Jim Sinur of Aragon Research and Jason Bloomberg of Intellyx.

Pedro Robledo, Alberto Manuel, Sandy Kemsley and Scott Francis have also been following BPM trends and technology for a long time now.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

BPM practitioners are already moving away from waterfall development approaches. They are not only embracing iterative and incremental development approaches but also realising that coding will always be involved in any advanced BPM implementation and that code it’s written by developers so that they need to work closely and better with them.

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Prof. Leslie Willcocks

Professor Willcocks has a worldwide reputation for his research and advisory work on IT and business process outsourcing, together with his work on organisational change, management, and global strategy. As well as being a professor in the Information Systems and Innovation Faculty Group, he is a Fellow of the British Computer Society.
For the last 21 years he has been Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Information Technology. He is co-author of 33 books, including most recently The Outsourcing Enterprise: From Cost Management To Collaborative Innovation (Palgrave 2011), China’s Emerging Outsourcing Capabilities (Palgrave, 2010), and The Practice of Outsourcing: From Information Systems to BPO and Offshoring, (Palgrave, 2009) He has published over 190 papers in journals such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, MIS Quarterly, MISQ Executive and Journal of Management Studies.
In February 2001 he won the PriceWaterhouseCoopers/Michael Corbett Associates World Outsourcing Achievement Award for his contribution to this field. He is a regular keynote speaker at international practitioner and academic conferences, such as World Outsourcing Summit, European Outsourcing Summit, ICIS and PACIS and is regularly retained as adviser by major corporations and government institutions. Selected clients for executive education programmes include: Standard Chartered Bank, Logica, Stater, ABNAmro Bank, Royal Sun Alliance, Singtel, Commonwealth Bank, Accenture, IBM, Rotterdam Port Harbour Authority, WH Smith, Eli Lilley, and several government institutions in the UK, USA and Australia. He has served as expert witness on congressional committees and senate inquiries on outsourcing in Australia and USA and provided evidence to a number of UK government reports on major public sector IT projects.

WWW: http://www.lse.ac.uk/management/people/lwillcocks.aspx
Twitter: @LSEManagement

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2019?

One dimension in RPA deployments worth remarking on is the missed opportunities in process redesign. Those experiencing disappointment in RPA and cognitive tools might usefully reflect whether blind faith in a technology solution stopped them from gaining optimal returns from a more reengineering focused approach.

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The post BPM Skills in 2019 – Hot or Not first appeared on BPM Tips.

Back to school 2018: free online courses for BPM professionals

Zbigniew — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 19:59:23 +0000

Since many of you enjoyed 2015, 2016 and 2017 editions of this post I hope this one will be useful for you too

1) Fundamentals of BPM

Normally the list started with awesome MOOCs by professors Marcello La Rosa, Marlon Dumas, Jan Mendling and Hajo Reijers, but sadly this autumn both Future Learn and QUT editions are not available. However, the authors are working towards a new MOOC to be made available next year.

You can also buy the updated version of the book “Fundamentals of BPM”, which is a source of content for the course:
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783662565087

On a website of the book you can also find slides, video lectures and many other useful resources:
http://fundamentals-of-bpm.org/supplementary-material/lectures/

You can watch the recordings from 2014 on YouTube too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL2LDY1TRcen1SCPmL1BY_yA1DijztcmIh&v=G05JD9RLoUw

Luckily there are additional interesting courses to pick from (plus one more option I mention at the end of the post). Most of them are not about “pure” BPM, but IMO they provide lots of inspiration whether it is Lean, Design Thinking, or even using sketching for visual communication

This time the list is experimentally organised by learning platform.

2) Coursera

If you like to learn on the go you will appreciate nice mobile application Coursera offers. Most of the courses are by default paid ones (with access to all the content, possibility to check yourself and interact fully with others plus get a certificate), but you can always select the free path (called “Audit the course”) and access all the videos plus some of the course content. Courses on Coursera are MOOCs, so they have start and end dates, but you can switch sessions if you are falling behind (you may need it since they all start on the same date…).

2a) “Design Thinking for Innovation” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/uva-darden-design-thinking-innovation)

Course description: “Today innovation is everyone’s business. Whether you are a manager in a global corporation, an entrepreneur starting up, in a government role, or a teacher in an elementary school, everyone is expected to get lean – to do better with less. And that is why we all need design thinking. At every level in every kind of organization, design thinking provides the tools you need to become an innovative thinker and uncover creative opportunities that are there – you’re just not seeing them yet.”
Created by: University of Virginia
Taught by: Jeanne M. Liedtka
Starts: August 30, 2018

2b) “Digital Transformation” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/bcg-uva-darden-digital-transformation)

Course description: “Digital transformation is a hot topic–but what exactly is it and what does it mean for companies? In this course, we talk about digital transformation in two ways. First we discuss the pace of change and the imperative it creates for businesses. Next we provide the context for this transformation and what it takes to win in the digital age. Then we walk through BCG’s proprietary framework, which helps you identify key areas to digitize, including strategy, core processes, and technology.”
Created by: BCG, University of Virginia
Taught by: Michael Lenox, Amane Dannouni, Sonja Rueger, Ching Fong Ong
Starts: August 30, 2018

2c) “Introduction to Operations Management” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-operations)

Course description: “Learn to analyze and improve business processes in services or in manufacturing by learning how to increase productivity and deliver higher quality standards. Key concepts include process analysis, bottlenecks, flows rates, and inventory levels, and more. After successfully completing this course, you can apply these skills to a real-world business challenge as part of the Wharton Business Foundations Specialization.”
Created by: University of Pennsylvania
Taught by: Christian Terwiesch
Starts: August 30, 2018

2d) “Process Mining: Data science in Action” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/process-mining)

Course description: “Process mining is the missing link between model-based process analysis and data-oriented analysis techniques. Through concrete data sets and easy to use software the course provides data science knowledge that can be applied directly to analyze and improve processes in a variety of domains.”
Created by: Eindhoven University of Technology
Taught by: Wil van der Aalst
Starts: August 30, 2018

2e) “Six Sigma Principles” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/six-sigma-principles)

Course description: “This course is for you if you are looking to learn more about Six Sigma or refresh your knowledge of the basic components of Six Sigma and Lean. Six Sigma skills are widely sought by employers both nationally and internationally. These skills have been proven to help improve business processes and performance. This course will introduce you to the purpose of Six Sigma and its value to an organization. You will learn about the basic principles of Six Sigma and Lean. Your instructors will introduce you to, and have you apply, some of the tools and metrics that are critical components of Six Sigma. This course will provide you with the basic knowledge of the principles, roles, and responsibilities of Six Sigma and Lean.”
Created by: University System of Georgia
Taught by: Bill Bailey, Gregory Wiles, David Cook, Christina Scherrer
Starts: August 30, 2018

2f) “The hidden value – Lean in manufacturing and services” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/lean-manufacturing-services)

Course description: “Lean is a powerful methodology that enables managers and employees to shift their mindset and helps companies to keep their business sustainable by creating competitive advantage. Today, in an increasingly complex and dynamic world, where companies struggle to maintain competitive advantage, Lean is more important than ever.”
Created by: École des Ponts ParisTech, BCG
Taught by: Aurélie Delemarle, Thomas Frost, Salvatore Cali, Elsa Blume
Starts: August 30, 2018

3) OpenHPI

This is an e-learning platform offered by German Hasso Plattner Institute. It offers a mix of MOOC and on demand courses (i.e. archives of past editions). All courses are available for free. Mobile application is available.

3a) “BPMN Meets DMN: Business Process and Decision Modeling” (https://open.hpi.de/courses/bpm2016)

As you can see from the URL this is a self-paced course based on a MOOC from 2016.
Course description: “This course introduces concepts of business process modeling using the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) industry standard. Participants will learn the elements of process models and their precise meaning. Based on a thorough understanding of business process models, the last part of the course covers decision models using the Decision Model and Notation (DMN). Decision models complement process models by representing concrete, operational decisions, both with their structure and their decision logics. The course centers around concepts and language to describe and analyze business processes and decisions. It does not cover methods on how to model, improve, monitor or implement business processes. Still, a deep understanding of business processes and decisions is a useful basis for these activities.”
Taught by: Prof. Dr. Mathias Weske
Starts: Self-paced

3b) “Human-Centered Design: From Synthesis to Creative Ideas” (https://open.hpi.de/courses/ideas2018)

Course description: “Make sense of design research data, learn to frame a problem from a user’s perspective, and generate lots of new ideas: This course will introduce you to the basics of design synthesis and brainstorming techniques.”
Taught by: Karen von Schmieden, Mana Taheri, Lena Mayer
Starts: September 19, 2018

4) OpenSAP

As you may guess from a name this is an e-learning platform with content by SAP. Technology behind it is the same as in the case of OpenHPI, so you also have a mobile application etc.

4a) “Be Visual! Sketching Basics for IT Business” (https://open.sap.com/courses/bvis1-3)

Course description: “Join this free, online openSAP course ‘Be Visual! Sketching Basic for IT Business’ and start learning the very basics of sketching. By applying the practice-oriented tips and tricks in this course, you’ll gain the confidence to present your ideas visually.”
Taught by: Martina Schuh, Johanna Wittig, Jörg Göppert, Ingo Rues, Tatjana Borovikov, Anja Fehlau
Starts: September 11, 2018

5) Courses provided by automation tools providers.

This list is mostly based on my post about RPA tools, but I also added few BPM tool providers with e-learning courses. Usually they are using their own pages or e-learning platforms which don’t have mobile applications, so you will need to use browser to learn. Those courses are normally videos available on-demand.

5a) Appian (https://academy.appian.com)

Over 30 courses available for free with information about BPM.

5b) Automation Anywhere (https://www.automationanywhereuniversity.com/)

Automation Anywhere provides a nice library of 10+ online courses. Some of them are free (over 8 hours of content), others are very reasonably priced.
There is also free introductory course on Udemy by Automation Anywhere.
https://www.udemy.com/beginners-guide-to-rpa-automation-anywhere/

5c) Bizagi (http://elearning.bizagi.com)

Bizagi offers 10+ courses about their tools.

5d) Bonitasoft (https://www.bonitasoft.com/videos)

There are dozens of video tutorials, webinars and other materials.

5e) Camunda (https://camunda.com/learn/videos/)

Camunda offers library of 6 video tutorials. And they have something unique – a hawk

5f) Pegasystems (https://academy.pega.com)

Pega Academy contains 100+ courses in several languages. There are 8 courses (and few exams) related to RPA. Overall free courses have over 5 days of content.

5g) UiPath (https://www.uipath.com/rpa-academy)

UiPath offers 9 courses for various groups of users in several languages. Overall there are 100+ hours of content – all for free.

5h) WorkFusion (https://automationacademy.com/)

There are 6 courses available – some provided by WorkFusion and others by partners. Overall there are 80+ hours of content. All the courses are free.

6) Do you want something more?

As you can see there are lots of free resources about process automation, but this time not so many about the business aspects of BPM.

In this case I can recommend you two options:
a) library of webinars by BOC Group where you can watch on demand over 20 webinars by my colleagues
https://us.boc-group.com/webinars/#c67447

b) let me know what you would like to learn about BPM.

I am currently working on an e-book and a course about process modelling and BPMN and in a few weeks time I would like to open my course to a group of beta-testers
So, if you want to influence direction of the course and access it for free sign up and tell me which other topics do you want to learn.

Sign up for updates about the BPMN book and course
The post Back to school 2018: free online courses for BPM professionals first appeared on BPM Tips.

BPM Skills in 2018 – Hot or Not

Zbigniew — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 20:14:58 +0000

Each year is a chance to make a change for yourself and your organization. But it will be a positive change only if you know what are the right things to focus on, and which ones should be avoided.

To help you make 2018 your best year ever I asked 20+ BPM experts about the skills that will be hot this year.

As you will see I kept the basic structure used in 2016 and 2017 version of this post, but to make it more actionable added a question about the best resources to learn the hot BPM skills.

Plus – this time I have something extra

The goal of this post is to help you stay sharp and relevant. That’s why you will find answers from people who live and breathe processes.

But to give you an overview of the megatrends shaping how organizations work I asked for opinion someone from the outside of BPM arena whose views on the market I appreciate greatly:

Anand Sanwal

Anand Sanwal is the Founder and CEO of CB Insights.

CB Insights enables Fortune 1000 companies identify emerging trends and threats early by ingesting & analyzing massive amounts of unstructured data beyond human cognition.

WWW: https://www.cbinsights.com/
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @asanwal

What are the trends that will impact the way organizations work and interact with customers in 2018?

In 2018 and beyond, large corporations will start to use Expert Augmentation and Automation Software (EAAS) to make better decisions in areas they’d never thought of “processes” before.

For example, an area like competitive intelligence has never been treated like a process in most large corporations. They have a bunch of analysts and consultants running around creating ad hoc decks opining on what a competitor’s strategy is based on the latest article or transaction or last quarter’s results of a competitor.

The same can be said for corporate strategy, assessing new markets and new products or even identifying M&A targets.

These are all areas that have historically been viewed as expertise-driven or what folks would describe as “more art than science” suggesting that these areas are solely reliant on human cognition.

The reality is that selecting new markets for entry or understanding competitors so you can respond appropriately are major decisions which will become more process-driven with technology and data because machines can provide a level of understanding that is more rigorous than humans can.

Let’s take an example.

If you asked an analyst at a corporation to analyze Google’s strategy in 5 days and you gave them 40 quarters of earnings transcripts, 10k Google patents, every job they have open, all their investments, M&A and partnership arrangements over time (thousands) and tens of thousands of press articles about Google, you know what they’d do with the thousands of pages of info you gave them?

Nothing.

They’d read an equity research report and a couple of articles about the company from media outlets and summarize them.

And because their inputs into their analysis are incomplete garbage, the end result is garbage. Garbage in, garbage out.

It’s willfully ignoring all the digital clues Google has left out there about its strategy. Google’s strategy is where it is allocating its resources and time. Where it is investing and acquiring, what its smartest people are researching, what it’s discussing with Wall Street, what it’s talking about with media, etc.

But there is so much of that information that it’s beyond human cognition and so analysts have to rely on shortcuts for their analysis.

Machines don’t have these limitations. We now have the technology and software to extract, classify and analyze this vast array of unstructured information, make sense of it and glean meaning from it with machines that are tailor-made for this.

Of course, Expert Automation & Augmentation Software will be more focused on augmentation, i.e., helping analysts do countless complex tasks that are either beyond human cognition and/or inefficient for human beings to do (read thousands of pages of patents and understand key topics).

Think of these AI-enhanced assistants as junior analysts who never tire and who can process information beyond human capacity but who will still need the steady eye of a manager to make subjective judgments.

If you want to learn more about the trends poised to reshape industries in 2018 there’s also an interesting (free) report by CB Insights called “15 Trends Shaping Tech In 2018”

Which BPM skills will be hot in 2018?

Now when you know the broader context, I want to share with you answers from 20+ BPM experts. You can either read everything or use the navigation below. Enjoy!

BJ Biernatowski
Roger Burlton
Alan Fish
Ian Gotts
Paul Harmon
Barbara Hodge
Sandeep Johal
Abhijit Kakhandiki
Sandy Kemsley
Mathias Kirchmer
Marcello La Rosa
Bob Larrivee
Juergen Pitschke
Alex Rawlings
Adrian Reed
Clay Richardson
Pedro Robledo
Michal Rosik
Alexander Samarin
Phil Simpson
Jim Sinur
Shik Sundar
Keith Swenson
James Taylor
Roger Tregear
Miguel Valdés-Faura

Now, let’s dive into the answers.

BJ Biernatowski

BJ Biernatowski is an advanced BPM Practitioner with 20 years of IT experience, 15 of which spent implementing Business Process Management solutions. He has practical experience with Pega, Appian, Tibco AMX BPM and K2 blackpearl including large-scale, mission-critical systems.

His articles have been published by KW World and others. He has advised on topics of BPM adoption at Fortune 500 companies, that include designing one of the largest clinical business rules-driven systems as well as receiving an award for the most diverse application of BPM.

BJs areas of interest include CoEs, Knowledge Work automation, and business-driven development. He can be found blogging at the Healthcare BPM Practitioners LinkedIn group, which he founded, as well as chasing Bigfoot on the Olympic Peninsula. UW Foster School of Business alumni and a Seattle, WA resident.

WWW: http://www.healthcarebpm.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @bjbiernatowski

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

Adaptability: The whole industry seems to be going through a couple of tectonic shifts i.e. adoption of the Cloud, IOT, Machine Learning,

Personal Case Management and Task Automation, Cloud Process Automation solutions. Some of these trends either complement or fully replace traditional BPM approaches.

Low Code: The need for quicker and simpler solutions will further drive adoption of low code process automation technologies causing confusion with the positioning of pure-play BPMS vendors.

Business and Solution Architecture awareness: A plethora of different automation technologies requires BPM practitioners to see through overlapping stacks as new products and platforms enter the market. Vendors only seem to be adding to this confusion, by releasing new features, components to further differentiate themselves from the competition. The use of nonstandard technical jargon and the lack of clarity around the positioning of these tools in the Enterprise Architecture stack don’t help either.

Great Communication: As BPM practice gets recognized as a critical component of your company digital transformation, the ability to communicate with different stakeholders, inspire, story tell, and lead through chaos becomes paramount.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Publishing house:
Future Strategies

Conferences:
bpmNEXT, OPEX Week, vendor and industry-specific conferences: Microsoft Ignite, PegaWorld, TibcoNow, Appian World

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

In terms of the hype, the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies does a great job forecasting new trends and fads from a multiyear perspective.

Given the high number of different modeling and prototyping tools out there that are still non-compliant or even closely related to BPMN, one cannot stop wondering about the future of this standard. Today it is possible to engage in business process automation activities without actually touching or modeling business processes. Beware of process automation m-architects using hyped presentations to lay the foundation for transformation programs – BPMN exists for a reason.

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Roger Burlton

Roger is the president of Process Renewal Consulting Group Inc. He is also co-founder of BPTrends Associates; the services firm of the world-leading BPTrends.com knowledge portal. He started the pioneering Process Renewal Group (PRG) in 1993 and was at the forefront of process-centric ways of running businesses.

He is regarded globally as a thought leader and dynamic practitioner who brings reason, clarity, and practicality to complex business architecture and business change.

Roger’s insights can be found in his acclaimed book: Business Process Management: Profiting from Process, the Business Process Manifesto, the Handbook on Business Process Management and numerous other publications including his articles featured on BPTrends.com.

Roger chairs several of the largest and most influential BPM conferences in the world and is a sought after speaker dealing with the tough issues of business change in a thought provoking and entertaining manner.

WWW: http://www.processrenewal.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @rogerburlton

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

* Process Architecture / Value Stream mapping directly linked to the external stakeholder so that every process is connected to and driven by value creation.

* Understand how to design the business for Business Agility – design for changeability. This is not the same as Agile software Development.

* The difference that digitalization (not digitization) can make to end to end processes and how the work flow changes now that the customer is no longer outside the process but is now an actor in conducting the process

* Data flow analysis that tracks date creation, updating, and reference across a whole chain to ensure integrity. This is critical in digitalized process solutions.

* Connecting processes to decisions and making sure process flows are NOT used to represent a flow of rule execution.

* Concept modeling which becomes the foundation for information, process, capability, rules and measurement definition. The definition of the business concepts and terms is critical to processes and all connecting domains that the process depends on to execute properly.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

* Start with articles to get a range of perspectives or go to a relevant conference

* Read some books relevant to the perspective that resonates with you

* Take some training and practice the approach as well as the subtleties that can only come from interacting with a knowledgeable human

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

No Longer:
* For business level modeling – you do not need to know or use detailed BPMN 2.x – just the core is sufficient if you are a process analyst.

* Multiple and deep levels of root cause analysis – keep it higher – you don’t have the time anymore and the changes will not be at the tweaking of processes but of the rethinking of them.

Not yet practically applicable yet:
* AI for process analysis and design efforts – may be a good choice however for high volume or very complex business problems.

* Broad scale process mining unless the process is highly transactional – especially if your organization is not very process mature.

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Alan Fish

Dr Alan N Fish is Principal Consultant in Decision Solutions with FICO, having over 30 years’ experience in the support, automation and optimisation of organisational decisions. He invented the “Decision Requirements Diagram” (DRD) which exposes the structure of a domain of decision-making, and developed Decision Requirements Analysis (DRA): a methodology for building and using such decision models. He is the author of “Knowledge Automation: How To Implement Decision Management in Business Processes” (Wiley), and co-author of the OMG specification Decision Model and Notation (DMN).

WWW: http://www.fico.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @AlanNFish

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

First and foremost, the ability to model the complete scope of automated processes formally, including not just the process flows but all decision-making and user interactions. This is best done using the OMG “Triple Crown” of standards: BPMN (for business process modelling), CMMN (for case / UI modelling) and DMN (for decision modelling). Secondly, the commitment to ensure that change management is planned and rolled out with due consideration for the users whose roles have been redesigned.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

A good book covering the Triple Crown is the 3rd edition of Real-Life BPMN, with introductions to CMMN and DMN, by Jakob Freund and Bernd Rucker. And my book Knowledge Automation is still a useful introduction to the principles of automating decision processes.

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Ian Gotts

Ian is a founder of Q9 Elements, tech advisor, investor, speaker and author.

Q9 Elements is a startup software company. It is looking to disrupt the BPM marketplace and enable clients to deliver huge levels of ROI.

WWW: iangotts.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @iangotts

If you want to be more valuable, get promoted, increase day rate, make a bigger difference, have more influence

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

Business analysis, critical questioning, challenging status quo (esp at senior level), understand implications of GDPR as a driver of change. Digital transformation is more revolution than evolution. Great read: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/why-digital-transformation-is-now-on-the-ceos-shoulders

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Get the big picture, think about how your industry can transform, reengineer from the customer perspective, understand industry drivers and compliance, follow @iangotts !! BTOES conference, TED talks

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Understanding different technical standards UML, BPMN, DMN RPA and AI are still emerging so practical skills are not very usable and standard/approaches are still evolving…. wait and see how they turn out.

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Paul Harmon

Paul Harmon is a Co-Founder, Executive Editor, and Senior Market Analyst at Business Process Trends – www.bptrends.com – an internationally popular website that provides a variety of free articles, columns and book reviews each month on trends, directions and best practices in business process management.

Paul is also a Co-Founder, Chief Methodologist, and a Principal Consultant of BPTrends Associates (BPTA), a professional services company providing executive education, training, and consulting services for organizations that are interested in understanding and implementing business process management.

Paul involvement in business process change dates back to the late 60’s when he worked with Geary Rummler, at Praxis Corp., and was responsible for managing the overall development and delivery of the performance improvement projects undertaken by that company. During the 70s and 80s he ran his own company, Harmon Associates, and undertook major process improvement programs at Bank of America, Security Pacific, Wells Fargo, Prudential, and Citibank, to name a few.

During the same period he was a Senior Consultant at Cutter Consortium and edited their Expert System Strategies, CASE, and Business Process Reengineering Strategies newsletters.

Paul is the author of Business Process Change: A Guide for Business Managers and BPM and Six Sigma Professionals (Morgan Kaufman, which issued the heavily revised second edition in 2007). He has authored or co-authored over twelve other books, including the very popular Expert Systems: AI for Business (1983) and is the co-author and editor of the BPTrends Product Reports, a widely read series of reports on BPM software products that are available on the www.bptrends.com site. Paul Harmon also writes two short articles each month on current BPM topics, which are mailed to the members of the BPTrends website.

Paul Harmon is an acknowledged BPM thought leader who is concerned with applying new technologies and methodologies to real-world business problems. He is a speaker and has developed and delivered executive seminars, workshops, briefings and keynote addresses on all aspects of BPM to conferences and at major organizations throughout the world.

WWW:www.bptrends.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @harmon_bptrends

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

BPTrends has just finished reviewing the data from the 2017-2018 BPM Survey. Among the new trends are Transformation, Digitization, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Transformation, as far as I can tell, is just another name for large projects. (We asked respondents to give examples of transformation projects and most of the examples were things they would have described, in earlier survey’s as large scale redesign projects or as business process reengineering.)

Digitization is a bit more subtle. In part it just refers to more automation, but in part it seems to refer to a new attitude towards automation — an attitude that values information in digital format — information that can be transformed and stored with greater ease and reused more readily. Thus, for example, using digital formats, a company can take video and store it, and then later search existing videos for given faces using facial recognition software. It means that the original video is much more useful and can be used by applications in ways that would have previously required hours of real time review by human observers. Digitization seems to refer to a whole new mindset about how to tie complex processes together using data stores and tools that allow rapid access to that data. Clearly that’s going to be a growing concern in the future.

Finally, there is a growing interest in AI. AI is a bit confusing because the term refers of a wide range of technologies and approaches. It refers to robotic devices, to sensors of all kinds, and to intelligent algorithms that make sense of data. Consider self-driving vehicles that will become more and more ubiquitous in the near future. First the vehicle needs a sensor array that can “picture” the surrounding environment, then it needs a “brain” that can evaluate the sensor data and decide what moves it can safely make, how to plot a path to a given location and how to execute the journey. Finally it needs physical mechanisms that can steer the car. It might also want a natural language capability to obtain directions from a passenger, or to give the passenger information on demand. In short, a robotic automobile isn’t a single thing, but a whole collection of AI capabilities coordinated to achieve a very flexible set of processes.

Many organizations are exploring specific AI technologies, like Analytics, or Robotic Process Automation (RPA), but these are really only stop-gaps — things to do while waiting for more sophisticated options. The more sophisticated options will require teams of people to organize and train the AI systems. Whatever AI apps may do in the long run, in the short run they will create an array of new jobs and require new skills on the part of managers and process practitioners. Intelligent business processes are definitely in the future of most organizations.

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Barbara Hodge

Barbara Hodge is SSON’s Global Editor, and has been with the organization since 2000, having joined to launch Shared Services News. She is now responsible for SSON’s online portal content, including industry reports, case studies, surveys, interviews, etc. – as well as everything else that makes SSON the most trusted space for practitioners from around the world.

Barbara uses her extensive industry knowledge and connections to provide a unique perspective on the latest trends and developments across the SS&O landscape. She is the voice of ssonetwork.com, SSON’s online content portal, and she regularly conducts interviews with key industry figures to ensure SSON is a one-stop shop for shared services and outsourcing resources.

Prior to joining SSON, Barbara was Editorial Director at Armstrong Information, a London-based specialist publishing firm, with responsibility for launch and editorial content management for a number of management journals, including corporate communication, change management and business process reengineering. She started her career with Deutsche Bank Capital Markets in London.

WWW: http://www.ssonetwork.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @ssonetwork
Twitter: @abrakabarbara

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

Today’s value add is all about understanding what automation can do for your operations, and at the same time ensuring that you have the strategies in place to prioritize data management. Automation is only as good as the data you can feed into it. That is a defining, and also limiting, mantra for the year ahead.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Experience is probably the best resource. And what I mean by that is finding the individuals with experience to lead or at least support in-house initiatives. While just a few years ago experience was sparse, today we see more and more successful case studies where intelligent automation has been successfully integrated. Of course we at the Shared Services and Outsourcing Network (SSON) have focused very much on the technology trends, alongside talent management and skills evolution. Our conferences offer a great opportunity to network and learn from the experience of others, and we are constantly sharing case studies, interviews, and white papers online.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

As a non-practitioner, I can only share what practitioners tell me and that is that you no longer need to be an accountant to provide value add within finance and accounting processes. While that may be simplifying it – accountants need not fear – the truth is that today understanding how a process works, and how technology drives that process, and where the relevant data sits in the enterprise and what to do with it once it’s been worked on are probably more significant in terms of driving value out of any given function.

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Sandeep Johal

Sandeep specialises in Business Process Management with deep roots in process analysis, architecture design, modelling, improvement and governance. Industry sectors that have engaged Sandeep include finance (banks, superannuation and hedge funds), education, mining, government (state and local), energy and utilities.

Sandeep’s consulting takes him to both national and international destinations including the Americas, Middle East, New Zealand and the UK. He is often invited to speak at national and international conferences and is regarded as a contributor to the Business Process Management body of knowledge. He holds a Masters in Information Technology (BPM), an honours in Business Management and a diploma in Mechanical Engineering.

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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

I’ve observed a return of Agile principles and techniques in delivering results consistently. Specifically, there’s a real push towards the ability to collaborate with a range of stakeholders (including business representatives and external vendors) keeping everyone ‘honest’ and expectations in check. I also see a strong emphasis on customer experience – which regularly transcends into human experience. The focus of process management is to produce superior customer experience. BPM practitioners have known this since the dawn of time, however, there’s a greater reliance on technology to enable this. Which means deeper automation, self-correction, machine learning and A.I. Since these are already becoming household terms, I would highly recommend BPM practitioners to be savvy in contemporary solutions and offering in that space (e.g. iBPMS, RPA, Streaming Analytics, etc.).

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

The best resources to learn those skills are subscribing to the correct Youtube channels, podcasts, vendor websites (including any online courses), attending/speaking at local and international conferences and engaging in online forums (like BPM-Tips of course)

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

For a long time, I’ve been an advocate of understanding the current state of processes. Current state understanding pertains to measuring the status quo so we’ll know we’ve improved. We would usually do this through laborious workshops, system investigations and document analysis. While satisfying and useful, I see less appetite for this type of work. Additionally, if organisations are increasingly automating, the human skills to document processes will quickly become a thing of the past.
To add salt to the wound, as systems become smarter (and self-correcting), process improvement skills may go out of vogue. The ability and speed of a human to process multiple (hundreds/thousands of) data points does not come close to the ability of specialised systems. Skills in these areas will also see a reduction. Instead, we (the humans) will focus on decisions and soft skills.

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Abhijit Kakhandiki

Abhijit is a Senior VP, Products at Automation Anywhere. He is a seasoned executive with a proven track record in new product development, go-to-market, and improved product P&L performance.

Abhijit oversees Automation Anywhere’s product strategy, design and delivery. His rich experience includes leading Autodesk’s transformation to the cloud, directing the team for Oracle’s next generation Innovation Management Cloud initiative, and steering product management and strategy for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) at Agile Software, where he delivered rapid product and customer experience improvement. Abhijit’s entrepreneurial endeavors consist of multiple M&As including a successful exit for his own startup, ATMA software, which is now part of Oracle.

What you didn’t know…: Besides forging successful product paths in the corporate world, Abhijit has also made tracks in nature—particularly upward. (He’s climbed Machu Picchu, Mt. Whitney, Mt. Shasta, Half Dome and Mt. Fuji, to name a few!)

WWW: https://www.automationanywhere.com
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Twitter: @AutomationAnywh

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

BPM practitioners can use RPA Bot creation skills (that are very easy to pick up) to rapidly increase their customers’ Digital transformation velocity.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

RPA providers such as Automation Anywhere have invested heavily in eLearning to create a growing and thriving community of RPA practitioners. Taking some of these courses and getting certified is a great first step.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

With technologies like RPA gaining adoption, skills in tackling complex, time-consuming, back-end integrations might take a backseat.

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Sandy Kemsley

Sandy is a “technology catalyst” with a 20-year history of software design and systems architecture in several technology areas, combined with a deep understanding of business environments and how technology can impact them.

She has also founded and run three companies – a systems integration services company, a software product company, and current consulting company – with responsibility for corporate and financial governance, strategic direction, team hiring and management, and day-to-day technical contributions.

Sandy blogs about BPM, enterprise architecture and other intersections of business and technology at www.column2.com

WWW: https://column2.com
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

The greatest value that BPM practitioners can bring to their organization is the ability to translate need into action. There has been a lot of focus on determining needs (by business analysts) and developing technical skills with the BPM platforms (by developers), but too few people can act as the catalyst between those two worlds. “Citizen developer” tools help to some extent by allowing the less complex applications to be built directly by the business analysts, but there will always be the need for combining the skills of the analysts with those of the developers. At this point, too few people on either side of that divide speak the other side’s language, resulting in a mismatch of what the business needs with what IT delivers. This is not a new problem, but is reaching a critical point in part because the availability of low-code tools for citizen developers is creating the perception that any application can be built by non-technical people using these tools.

My advice for business analysts/users who are eliciting requirements is that they become proficient with the low-code BPM platform at use in their company, and use it to create at least an initial prototype of an application that they walk through with the business users, rather than just handing off written requirements to developers; this will allow them to understand a bit more of what it needed to create all parts of an application rather than just the happy path.

My advice for developers is to spend time shadowing business users as they do their job, taking note of the things that slow them down and result in a lot of non-value-added manual work such as logging cases in a spreadsheet; if you don’t see it for yourself, you can’t really understand what’s required to make their work better.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

The skills that I recommend for business analysts is to learn how to build applications using the low-code BPM platforms. For this, they may need a short training course (hopefully available online, depending on the vendor) but usually the platforms allow someone to get started with very little training, then learn more as they progress: I suggest just diving in and start building some real applications with the tools and see what happens. At some point, they should engage with developers to review their application since that will provide more of a technical analysis and help to improve their application building style in terms of reusability and standardization.

For developers, I’m also a big fan of hands-on work rather than just reading about it. Ask for an opportunity to sit with a business user at their desk one-on-one (in a meeting room with a group is not a good substitute) for a period of 30-60 minutes, watch while they just do their normal job, ask questions about what they’re doing and why, and document what you see. If you observe your way through a series of business users from one end of a process to the other, you’ll gain insights into how to improve the overall process (which will impact the underlying process model) as well as the work for any particular user (which will impact the application at their point of interaction).

In general, I think you can learn more about these skills by hearing about the experiences of other people who have done the same thing. Attend related conferences, webinars and local meetups whenever you have the chance. I do a lot of conference blogging, but I’m not the only one: following blogs that write about the specific sessions at conferences can give you a great deal of insight even if you can’t attend in person.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

In all technology fields, not just BPM, we’re seeing a lot of about interest in two technologies: artificial intelligence and blockchain. They are both relevant to BPM, but still at the bleeding edge in most situations, so not something that you need to spend too much time on (unless you’re a researcher) until they become more mainstream and embedded in commercial products. Keep an eye on what’s happening, but don’t count on a huge contribution from these in day-to-day business in 2018.

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Dr. Mathias Kirchmer

Dr. Kirchmer is a visionary leader, thought leader and innovator in the field of Business Process Management (BPM), successfully integrating business and technology initiatives. He has combined his broad business experience with his extensive academic research to deliver pioneering management approaches that have proven to be both, sustainable and provide immediate benefits.

Most recently, Dr. Kirchmer founded BPM-D, a company focused on enabling ongoing digital transformation and strategy execution through the discipline of BPM. Before he was Managing Director and Global Lead of BPM at Accenture, and CEO of the Americas and Japan of IDS Scheer, known for its ARIS Software.

Dr. Kirchmer has published 11 books and over 150 articles. He is affiliated faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and teaches regularly at several other universities. In 2004, he received a research and teaching fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

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WWW: http://bpm-d.com
Twitter: @mtki2006

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

* Discipline of Strategy Execution and Value-driven Digitalization: BPM is seen more and more as the management discipline focused on strategy execution across the enterprise. Digitalization has become part of basically every business strategy. BPM aligns people, their organizational units and the supporting digital technology, focusing everything on creating value for clients. Hence BPM becomes THE discipline that combines strategy execution with the related value-creation through digitalization. Process Governance becomes a key lever. BPM Practitioners have to organize their discipline accordingly.

* Rapid Process Improvement (RPI): Since the business environment changes so quickly rapid process improvement approaches will continue to replace slow traditional approaches. Using a value-driven approach to process modelling and repository tools in combination with process analytics and mining techniques resurfaces as a key enabler of sustainable agile process improvement.

* Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPA has started to close an important gap in next generation process automation. Combining RPA with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cognitive features makes it a powerful improvement component that eliminates more and more of the routine work in our offices.

* Integrated Process and Data view: The best process does not work without the right quality of data and data is not worth much without the processes transferring them into value. Therefore an integrated process and data view is required. This is especially important in a digital world which moves fast and does not give much time to adjust processes and data. As a consequence process and data governance will be integrated.

* Continuous People Enablement and Culture: The limits of process improvement will be determined by the imagination and capabilities of people rather than through the technology. The key to success will center around the collaborative engagement of people in owning and improving processes. The collaboration is enabled through robust approaches to providing ongoing information, communication, training and education related to emerging process improvement tools, technologies and approaches. This includes specifically executive education on the new realities of value-driven process management so that decision makers can be more effective in the digital world. Result is a more process and performance driven enterprise culture.

* Process-driven Project Portfolio Management and Value Realization: Improvement projects need to be systematically prioritized regarding their importance for the overall business strategy and focused on best value-creation per dollar spent. After project conclusion the value realization has to continue seamlessly. The BPM-Discipline has to deliver the appropriate approach – enabling systematic growth in our digital world.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

* A good overview over the topics mentioned is provided by industry organizations, like ABPMP or the BPM-Institute, and by specialized service firms like BPM-D. It is worth to compare training and education agendas to come up with the right mix.

* There are more and more eLearning offerings available covering at least some of those topics, such as the module “Strategy Execution in a Digital World: The BPM-Discipline” from BPM-D.

* A deeper and more comprehensive education in many of the areas mentioned is provided by academic institutions, such as Widener University (Master in Business Process Innovation) or the University of Pennsylvania (Program of Organizational Dynamics in the School for Arts and Sciences).

* In addition there are first books available covering those topics, such as “High Performance through Business Process Management – Strategy Execution in a Digital World” or “The Drivers of the Digital Transformation”.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I think many of the traditional statistical improvement tools and related traditional approaches, like e.g. Six Sigma, will continue to lose traction since their application in the office environment is too slow for the digital world.

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Marcello La Rosa

Professor Marcello La Rosa has been researching and teaching BPM at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) for over a decade. He has now left QUT to join The University of Melbourne, where he will lead the Information Systems group and establish a new BPM research team.

His research interests span different BPM areas, including process mining, consolidation and automation, in which he published over 100 papers. He leads the Apromore Initiative (http://apromore.org) – a strategic collaboration between various universities for the development of an advanced business process analytics platform. Marcello has taught BPM to practitioners and students in Australia and overseas for over ten years. Based on this experience, he co-authored “Fundamentals of Business Process Management” – the first, comprehensive textbook on BPM, which has influenced the curriculum of close to 250 universities in the world and has been translated to Chinese and Greek. Using this book he co-developed a series of MOOCs on BPM, which have collectively attracted over 25,000 participants.

WWW: marcellolarosa.com
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

Despite the availability of a repertoire of techniques and software tools, both commercial and open-source, process mining is still largely an untapped new technology. It’s time to leave the worries behind and seriously invest in process mining[1] upskilling. In my experience, however, business analysts are still mostly unaware, or have just heard, about process mining. How to set up and conduct a process mining project? How to manage that? What are reasonable objectives to have for such projects? What data (and data attributes) are required? Is the data of good quality? What systems should I look into, to extract this data? What are the most suitable process mining techniques for my objectives? What tools are available that implement these techniques? How to interpret the results of such techniques and use these to build up a business case? In my opinion, these are some of the key questions a modern business analyst should be able to answer.

[1] In a nutshell, process mining is about inferring process knowledge from transactional logs, say logs recording executions of an order-to-cash or claims handling process. This knowledge that we can extract can take different forms. It can be, for example, a BPMN model that is automatically discovered, performance analytics pinpointing bottlenecks and resource overload issues, conformance analytics showing deviations from norms or high exposure to risks, or predictive analytics showing the likely outcome or duration of running process cases (e.g. orders currently open).

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

There’s plenty of literature available on process mining. A gentle introduction to the topic, including a classification of the various techniques available and plenty of hands-on exercises, can be found in Chapter 11 of the upcoming 2nd edition of “Fundamentals of Business Process Management”, by M. Dumas, M. La Rosa, J. Mendling and H. Reijers, Springer 2018 (https://goo.gl/taUX2b).

For the technical minds, you can consult THE reference book on process mining: “Process Mining: Data Science in Action”, by W. van der Aalst, Springer 2016 (https://goo.gl/d7Hjwo). Another book that treats the specific application of process mining to healthcare is “Process Mining in Healthcare: Evaluating and Exploring Operational Healthcare Processes”, by R. Mans, W. van der Aalst and R. Vanwersch. All these books are of course also available as eBooks.

But if you feel books are old school, you can always tap into an online course (MOOC) on process mining (https://goo.gl/oNK5nf). There are three that I know of: “Process Mining: Data Science in Action” on Coursera (https://goo.gl/C3uaST, open all year around), and a couple on Future Learn: “Introduction to Process Mining with ProM”, which teaches how to use the open-source tool ProM (https://goo.gl/G4WC8p) and “Process Mining in Healthcare” (https://goo.gl/LRF7Mg). There’s also plenty of commercial tools, such as Celonis, Signavio, Minit, myInvenio etc. as well as open-source tools such as Apromore (http://apromore.org) – catered towards end users, and ProM (http://promtools.org) – catered towards data scientists.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I don’t think there are BPM skills no longer relevant. All are relevant depending on what value we want to get from BPM. For example, if we are up for improving the quality of our products or services, I think there’s (a legitimate) room for Six Sigma’s statistical techniques, or if we want to improve efficiency, there’s certainly room for applying waste analysis techniques from Lean.

As for the not-practically-applicable-yet techniques, I think that in the last couple of years a lot of effort has been spent toward promoting BPM as an enabler for digital transformation. However, we haven’t seen, yet, the establishment of techniques that concretely indicate how to go about using BPM for digital transformation. I feel at this stage it’s mostly wishful thinking.

Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe that BPM can foster, if not lead, the digital transformation of an organization, but for that to happen systematically, we need the availability of concrete techniques that operationalize a set of well-defined principles for using BPM for digital transformation. And that hasn’t happened yet. So this is an invite to all those practitioners who have already experimented with BPM & digital transformation to start divulgating their practices and lessons learned, and at the same time, it’s an invite to academics to empirically evaluate these practices at scale, to derive reproducible outcomes.

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Bob Larrivee

Bob Larrivee, Vice President and Chief Analyst of Market Intelligence – AIIM.

Bob is an internationally recognized subject matter expert and thought leader with over thirty years of experience in the fields of information and process management, and recipient of the Cenadem Brazil – ECM pioneer Award. Bob is an avid techie with a focus on process improvement, and the application of advanced technologies to enhance and automate business operations.

WWW: Free Webinar: How to Plan Your Intelligent Information Management Strategy in 2018
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

I think that some of the hottest skills will be on the user side as the Now-Side/No-Code tools become more prevalent and available. They will need to be able to articulate and map their processes, which many can do today, but more will need to do tomorrow.

BPM is moving in a direction of placing more power in the hands of the business where business decisions need to be made on how it is conducted and transacted in order to meet customer demand, and deliver a great customer experience.

The power to design and modify business processes by the line-of-business personnel without total reliance or dependence on IT is a game changer in my view. There is still a need to have integration and IT working to link our information ecosystem on the back-end, and look for new and better ways of doing so. I see a future for BPM the takes businesses in new directions, opening the eyes of the user to options and possibilities they never knew existed, and freeing IT resources to extend their and strengthen the ecosystem to be more secure, more tightly connected, and ore accessible to internal and external customers.

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Juergen Pitschke

Juergen Pitschke is Partner and Managing Director at Process Renewal Group Deutschland.

Juergen has more than 25 years industrial experience about enterprise modelling and the realization of Business and IT Architectures. He is recognized for his deep knowledge and the systematic use of visual standard notations and of different frameworks für the design of an Enterprise Architecture. His knowledge is often sought in the field of Business Process Management and Decision Management.
His focus are model-based approaches for enterprise design and their practical use. Clients value his abilities to explain concepts, to help teams to adopt and successfully apply such methods, and to guide projects successfully.

He is author of the book “Unternehmensmodellierung für die Praxis”. He translated the Business Process Manifesto, the Decision Management Manifesto, and the RuleSpeak® – approach into German.

His customers include companies as Kuehne+Nagel (AG & Co.) KG, Boehler Edelstahl or organizations like the Federal Office of Police in Switzerland.

WWW: http://processrenewal.de
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

Modelling is an important skill in Business Process Management. This stays valid.
In the last year discussion about notations reduced. The focus is really on application and becomes more mature. Beside BPMN DMN is the most relevant one. It is important to understand the concepts behind the notation and apply it to relevant problems.
In modeling the most usual problem is to manage the right abstraction level. This leads directly to the discussion of Business Architecture and Business Agility. Modeling is a must. But how can you be agile if your models are not agile?

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

The best books this year are about DMN: “Real-world Decision Modeling with DMN” by James Taylor and Jan Purchase and for Business Process Management in general: Reimagining Management: Putting Process at the Center of Business Management” by Roger Tregear.
For “Agility” the book from Scott Ambler about Disciplined Business Agility are a good inspiration even if this is oriented to software development. You can learn a lot from it. Reflect this and apply it to your business problems. Compare it with the Business Agility Manifesto by Ron Ross, Roger Burlton and John Zachmann.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

In the last year we spoke about CMMN. It seems not to reach the practice. I hope this improves in 2018.
A hype topic for me is Process Mining as it is in the moment. To mine just to find out about the as-is process. To improve this is not enough. And you have to find the different abstraction level. The current tools have to become more integrated with other tools and techniques.

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Alex Rawlings

Alex leads the FLOvate Marketing team and is working to establish LEAP as the market leading low code software platform. With over 15 years in marketing, Alex is a well-established communicator and enjoys working with a wide number of organisations to explore and define authentic business value. She works as part of a focused and talented team dedicated to support businesses looking for a way to drive innovation within their operational structure.

WWW: https://www.flovate.com
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

The most important technique a BPM Practitioner can bring to their organisation is the ability to pace and plan their approach carefully.

Fundamental basics which are often overlooked such as thorough company overview, discussions with key decision makers/end users and realistic process challenge analysis are all key skills to ensure that critical changes are made to secure greater value.

Finally, never overlook customer feedback. No matter how forward-thinking your system is it has to be functional and deliver what your consumers believe to be important, such as a simplified agile working and a humanized approach. – The most important skill to ensure you create authentic process value is to directly learn from the people that use and administrate that system daily.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

From personal experience of leading/attending process workshops and training courses I can vouch for their effectiveness. The more you practice your craft and immerse yourself within in the world of process improvement and BPM the sooner it will become common sense in practice.

Looking to online communities, listening to podcasts and attending BPM and Process Excellence Shows will also provide invaluable insight to benefit your skill set.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Robotics and AI for the majority are overhyped with many organisations not being ready for this technology (some are of course). The data we gather is mostly in such a mess that it will be a long time before businesses are routinely using Robotic learning to initiate better decision making. Most companies just need to work towards these advancements – utilising the other alternatives available to operate better.

Hard-coded process solutions are quickly becoming an obsolete method due to the static processes that are created as a result. With more beneficial and quicker options available such as the agile workings of Low-code which is mostly configurable and can be adapted to company and legislative change, the need isn’t there for this long and tedious alternative.

Department centric working is quickly becoming an irrelevant way to effectively operate. Companies are discovering that mobile teams provide more value as they collaborate and look at the bigger picture and the roles that bleed into each other. The popularity and rise in companies utilising Scrum Teams highlights this.

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Adrian Reed

Adrian Reed is a true advocate of the analysis profession. In his day job, he acts as Principal Consultant and Director at Blackmetric Business Solutions where he provides business analysis consultancy and training solutions to a range of clients in varying industries. Adrian is President of the UK chapter of the IIBA and he speaks internationally on topics relating to business analysis and business change. You can read Adrian’s blog at http://www.adrianreed.co.uk and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/UKAdrianReed.

WWW: http://www.adrianreed.co.uk
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

Wow—that’s a broad question! And an important one too.

It would be tempting to talk about analytical and modelling skills here, and of course those skills are extremely important and we shouldn’t neglect them, but in many ways they have become a staple baseline. There are many skills that I could talk about here, and I have always found interpersonal skills are crucial. In fact, I feel they are becoming even more relevant in the complex and fast-changing world in which we live. So, I would say understanding the human side of process management and process change is paramount.

Some examples might include:

• Influencing/”Selling”: It’s often crucial to get people to see the value of business process management or business process improvement initiatives. There are some techniques that we can borrow from the world of ‘sales’—I am not implying we should become full-on sales-people (and we certainly shouldn’t ‘hard sell’), but using techniques like the features and benefits table can help us to determine the best way to showcase our activities and get people on board.
• Stakeholder Analysis, Engagement and Communication: Process management and process change relies on high levels of stakeholder engagement and regular communication. This is probably something we all do implicitly, but it is always useful to sharpen our skills!
• Facilitation & Conflict Resolution: There will always be differences of opinion in organizations. Being able to acknowledge and reflect upon different stakeholder perspectives, and help the organization ‘learn its way through’ a tricky situation will make it much more likely that change will stick.

All of these skills help us create a situation where we co-create with our stakeholders, so there is true shared ownership.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

I find the book ‘Getting to Yes’ by Fisher & Ury provides a practical perspective on negotiation, introducing the idea of ‘principled negotiation’. I have utilized the essence of these principles many times in my working life.

I also find there are many useful articles and blogs on the Harvard Business Review website.

However, interpersonal skills are probably largely enhanced through doing. This often requires us as practitioners to step out of our comfort-zones, step-up to situations where there may be conflict, and do what we can to ensure that the best interests of the organization are pursued. It can be scary, but it feels very rewarding being part of a team that has resolved a conflict and ‘unblocked’ a tricky organizational situation!

Classroom based training can create a useful ‘safe space’ in which to learn the theory and practice these skills too, but it is most beneficial when it is followed up quickly with a real-world application.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I think what is relevant really comes down to the organizational context. I certainly struggle to think of a skill that would never be applicable.

I suppose a personal reflection would be that over the past few years I have found less need for lengthy, written reports or presentations. We now live in a world where there are many ways of communicating, and time is precious. I’ve experimented with using short videos instead of lengthy reports—and the feedback so far has been really positive. Of course, it depends on who the particular recipient is, and their preferred communication style.

So, although there are certainly some uses for lengthy report-writing, perhaps there will increasingly be more of a focus on succinct and even visual communication. And of course, as practitioners who are used to modelling, we are extremely well-placed to find visual ways of communicating!

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Clay Richardson

Clay is the co-founder of Digital FastForward. He has spent most of his career helping leaders build and execute strategies around new disruptive technologies. Formerly with Forrester Research, a leading market research firm, Clay oversaw research and client advisory projects focused on digital innovation, digital automation, design thinking, and lean startup practices. Clay is a frequent keynote speaker at digital innovation events and conferences.

WWW: https://digitalfastforward.com
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

By now, most BPM practitioners know they need to refresh their skills in order to lead digital transformation within their organizations. Design thinking is still at the top of my list of skills that BPM practitioners need to build to step into new digital roles. Design thinking provides processes and techniques that help frame and accelerate new innovation opportunities.

In our 2017 Digital Workforce Survey, we uncovered a large gap in skills for robotic automation and artificial intelligence. Only 11% of respondents reported their organizations had expert level skills with artificial intelligence, and only 5% reported expert level skills with robotic automation. These two capabilities represent the next wave of skills BPM practitioners must learn to create value for their organizations.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

My take? Hands-on and experiential learning are the best ways to learn these new digital skills. Particularly for design thinking, since it really does require that you get your hands dirty with brainstorming and rapid prototyping.

Last year, I attended an on-line artificial intelligence course from Udacity to see what the learning experience was like. The course itself was pretty complex, I needed to brush the dust off my linear algebra and statistics books from college. I thought the course provided a great overview and introduction to basic AI concepts, but required a huge time commitment.

I think most BPM professionals don’t have the time or patience to go through an eight-week course to learn basic AI or robotic automation concepts. A hands-on three-day course will be a much more appealing option for busy professionals. For example, we’re working with the Digital Business Institute to offer a four-day training program that covers key digital skills, including design-thinking, robotic automation, and AI.

Also, books are a great way to jumpstart learning new skills, such as design thinking. For example, I recommend checking out “Creative Confidence” by John and David Kelly of IDEO, one of the world’s leading design thinking consultancies. The book provides a thorough overview of key design thinking concepts, and helps build a foundation before moving on to hands-on training and application.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

In our survey, 24% of respondents expressed interest in attending training on data science. True data science training, focused on learning how to build and deploy complex prediction models and business rules, is not yet accessible for most BPM professionals. However, as low-code solutions extend to support building sophisticated data and analytics models, data science will become more accessible to BPM professionals that don’t have a PhD in predictive modeling.

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Pedro Robledo

One of the most influential Spanish thought leader in Process Management using BPM, as for +15 years he has been dedicated to promote industry awareness of Business Process Management in Spain and Latin America. Director and Professor of BPM Master in UNIR. BPM Interim Manager for helping Organizations in its BPM and Digital Transformation initiatives. International Speaker about BPM. Since 2013 participates as jury of the WfMC Awards for Excellence in BPM and Workflow. He writes about BPM and Digital Transformation in his blog: El Libro Blanco Sobre La Gestión de Procesos.

WWW: LI profile
WWW: Blog
Twitter: @pedrorobledoBPM

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

In 2018, for most companies, it is the moment when they will have to approach their digital strategy and begin to apply it more broadly. Digital innovation in companies requires reviewing all current processes to make the necessary changes to achieve their digital and corporate objectives. And BPM discipline and technology plays a key role. The market continues with the need for BPM professionals, It is estimated that an increase of 66% of professionals with BPM knowledge is necessary all over the world to cover the current demand for employment. The true picture on process automation is starting to change with the arrival of disruptive and smarter technologies applied to BPM initiatives, as Artificial Intelligence (machine learning, deep learning and cognitive systems), Internet of Things, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Virtual Assistants, Immersive user experience systems (Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality), Analytics (Augmented, Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics), Event Processing, Process Mining… They will drive the next wave of disruption, agility and productivity in the digital company and they will lead to great advances in all organizations.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

For Spanish speakers, they have the most complete and official university postgraduate in Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (UNIR), a 1 year online university master: “Business Process Management for Digital Transformation” that the next edition will start in March 2018. This official UNIR Postgraduate is the only practical one with different BPM technologies and, in addition, it covers all BPM Life Cycle and the disruptive technologies applied to BPM initiatives.
About books, the most important library of English Books is Future Strategies. For Spanish readers, BPMteca.com, focused on BPM books in Spanish. In my blog (http://pedrorobledobpm.blogspot.com.es/), I have some posts with bibliography by topics, and I will write more during this year.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

As BPM maturity is low in the market yet, all the traditional BPM skills are relevant. BPM Professionals need to go deeper into BPM discipline and not stay in automation of departmental processes, so they must eliminate the vision of vertical developments with BPM technology and focus on transversal processes and process management aligned with the corporate strategy.

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Michal Rosik

CPO, Minit.io
Michal Rosik is responsible for building and scaling process mining tool Minit.io.

He also develops relations with the process mining academic community and evangelizes process mining benefits to enterprises worldwide.

WWW: http://www.minit.io
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @rosik
Twitter: @minit_io

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

The year 2017 has been a year of Data Science or better said a year of Data Science being inflated to enormous size. Disciplines, methods, techniques, algorithms, technologies – everyone added a thing or two, trying to create a cure for every illness. Even the best data scientists were overloaded with news, trying to keep up with the tempo.

The year 2018 should introduce a lot of housekeeping tasks:
i. Learning how to select valuable and relevant techniques
ii. Understand use cases and scenarios best fitting specific methods
iii. Learn how to explain even the most complex algorithms to business users
iv. Enable easy repetition of analytical tasks

Specific techniques such as process mining bring a lot of valuable insight, but cannot stand on their own. They must grow into a complex business intelligence platform with simple, visual interface and lots of built-in intelligence and automation.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

While in 2017 it was enough to find and identify the problem, the year 2018 eagerly waits to receive the full root cause analysis. It will ask what is the reason for the issue, why did it happen?
Predictions will evolve, but slowly.
Simulation is dying in its complexity (although there are specific industries where it’s vital).

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Alexander Samarin

Alexander Samarin is an Architect for Achieving the Synergy between Strategy, Good Business Practices and Disruptive Digital Technologies

WWW: Blog
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @samarin

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

1. Proactive apply the power of BPM (i.e. managing by processes) for solving enterprise-wide wicked problems such as:

– security – see https://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.bg/2015/01/enrich-rbac-and-abac-with-probac.html

– GDPR – see http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.bg/2017/06/gdpr-as-bpm-application.html
– digital transformation – Consider that digital organisation is an organisation building life cycles of its primary artefacts on the primacy of explicit, formal, computer-readable and computer-executable presentation of those artefacts, and then apply practical process pattern “LifeCycle As A Process (LCAAP)” – see http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.bg/2013/11/practical-process-patterns-lifecycle-as.html

2. Consider “go upstream” to understand architecture, for example, https://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.bg/search/label/%23BAW

3. Know how to handle the hype by decomposing it into its functional components and find that some of them are useful. Examples:

– RPA – https://bpm.com/bpm-today/in-the-forum/5786-you-know-a-company-could-really-use-robotic-process-automation-when

– no-code / low-code – https://bpm.com/bpm-today/in-the-forum/5800-how-important-is-low-code-no-code-development-to-digital-transformation

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Phil Simpson

Phil Simpson is JBoss product marketing manager at Red Hat where he’s responsible for market positioning and messaging activities for JBoss Enterprise BRMS. Phil has extensive experience with business rules and BPM solutions. He led the product management function at an early business-rules pioneer and has held senior marketing roles at several leading technology companies. Prior to joining Red Hat, he was product manager for the data analytics firm Renesys and was a director at SeaChange International, Ironhead Analytics, and Rulespower. Phil holds a bachelor’s degree from Southampton University in the UK.

WWW: https://www.redhat.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @RedHatNews

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

We’re beginning to see greater engagement between the business and IT sides of organizations as businesses tackle the challenges of digital transformation projects. My advice to BPM practitioners is to embrace the opportunity to learn about the technologies and practices that IT will use to develop the next generation of business applications. These apps can only be built by business and IT working together, and so it’s more important than ever that both sides share a common grounding. To start, I’d recommend BPM practitioners take a look at “DevOps“, or even “BizDevOps“. These practices are becoming more widely employed particularly for developing cloud-based applications. From a technology perspective I think BPM practitioners would benefit from a basic understanding of Containers and Microservices architectures, since this is likely how BPM models will be incorporated into future apps. Of course there is a long list of other emerging technologies that are impacting digital transformation projects, and if I were to pick one for BPM practitioners to focus on it would be Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Pick a mainstream RPA product, and learn how to use it. You’ll be a step ahead when you finally need to fully automate that manual process.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Traditional BPM skills are still relevant in 2018. I wouldn’t ‘unlearn’ anything. The key will be learning how to apply them, in collaboration with IT, to the development of new applications. There are some new technologies that are still early in the hype cycle though. AI for example. If you have a project that needs a specific AI capability, like a chatbot, it can be a useful skill to learn, but in general I don’t think broad AI solutions are ready for widespread adoption by the business this year.

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Jim Sinur

Jim Sinur is an independent thought leader in applying business process management (BPM) to innovative digital organizations. His research and areas of personal experience focus on business process innovation, business modeling, business process management technology (iBPMS), process collaboration for knowledge workers, process intelligence/optimization, business policy/rule management (BRMS), and leveraging business applications in processes. Jim is also one of the authors of BPM: The Next Wave. His latest book is Digital Transformation. Innovate or Die Slowly.

WWW: https://aragonresearch.com
WWW: http://jimsinur.blogspot.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @JimSinur

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

There are a number of skills that BPM folks could pick up as there are many coming out of the digital evolution, but my top seven would be the following:

1) Journey Mapping for Customers, Employees and Partners including touchpoint analysis and persona creation.

2) Embedded Advanced Analytic and Augmented Reality Capabilities. Process plus big and fast data mining is on the grow.

3) Adaptive and Goal Driven Processes (often in Case Management and also Explicit Rule enabled)

4) AI looking for opportunities to add automation or more smarts like Robotic Program Automation (RPA). Machine learning is hot and Deep Learning is starting to gain momentum.

5) Cognitive Collaboration for Knowledge Intense Processes or Cases. AI Assistance is starting

6) Signal and Pattern Detection (often needed for agility, IoT and business strategy). IoT integration is a new emerging theme

7) Merging Control on the Edge with Central Control. Decisions and actions at the edge is starting to emerge

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

While there are no skills that one should drop, there are several that are considered common and receding. My top three would be the following:

1) Central control approaches and siloed skill sets

2) Water Fall project methods are taking a second seat to incremental development, RPA and rapid experimentation,

3) Large blocks of dumb frozen code are giving way to smart components, micro services and late binding rules guided by constraints

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Shik Sundar

Shik Sundar currently leads global sales and partnerships at Pipefy, the “no code” agile process automation platform used by over 15,000 companies in 150 countries. Shik brings 10+ years of hyper-growth startup experience to Pipefy, across a diverse array of products such as mobile-first safety applications and digital marketing. Shik began his career in healthcare technology, having co-founded Benefitter (acquired by HealthMarkets) and leading sales at Adreima (acquired by nThrive). He holds a B.S. in Neuroscience from Emory University.

WWW: https://www.pipefy.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @ShikSundar
Twitter: @Pipefy

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

Agile process management. The pace of change is going to continue to accelerate over the course of 2018 and businesses will have to adapt quickly to their new realities. You’re going to face new competitors, new business models, and new customer expectations… all of which will require new processes and new controls to guarantee execution. Bringing a culture of agility to the organization will be essential to achieve sustainable success/growth. How can you design solutions that balance the requirement of the business to have consistency, efficiency, and quality outputs while still providing a framework to change quickly if needed? How can you provide your users with tools that enable them to change quickly?

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

* Stanford University’s Design Thinking crash course: https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources-collections/a-virtual-crash-course-in-design-thinking

* Agile, Lean, and Design Thinking course on Lynda: https://www.lynda.com/Interaction-Design-tutorials/Agile-lean-design-thinking/476938/551733-4.html

* McKinsey Quarterly article “Why agility pays”: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-agility-pays

* McKinsey Quarterly article “The keys to organizational agility”: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-keys-to-organizational-agility

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

BPM programming. As tools increasingly become more self-serve and user-friendly, it will become irrelevant for practitioners to train on esoteric notation and tool-specific programming.

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Keith Swenson

Keith Swenson is Vice President of Research and Development at Fujitsu North America and also the Chairman of the Workflow Management Coalition. As a speaker, author, and contributor to many workflow and BPM standards, he is known for having been a pioneer in collaboration software and web services. He has led agile software development teams at MS2, Netscape, Ashton Tate & Fujitsu. He won the 2004 Marvin L. Manheim Award for outstanding contributions in the field of workflow. Co-author on more than 10 books. His latest book, “When Thinking Matters in the Workplace,” explains how to avoid stifling creativity and enhance innovation through the appropriate use of process technology. His 2010 book “Mastering the Unpredictable” introduced and defined the field of adaptive case management and established him as a Top Influencer in the field of case management. He blogs at https://social-biz.org/.

WWW: https://social-biz.org
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @swensonkeith

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

The most important skill and technique to learn in the process space for 2018 will be Deep Learning. Alpha-Go showed us a system that can play a game that was considered unsolvable only a few years ago, and it did this without any programming by humans. Tremendous advances in (1) big data and (2) cheap parallel computation, but….

At the same time, the most disappointing innovation for 2018 will be Deep Learning as well. Learning systems really have not solved broad open ended problems such as we need in the process space. Currently limited to hand-coded algorithms. Deep learning exhibits very quirky reliability: some amazing results, but lots of overwhelmingly problematic results on the long tail of exceptional situations. In such a system it is hard to understand what has been learned, and hard to modify and adapt it without starting over. Automatically improving a process requires understanding the business (cultural, moral, etc.) far outside the system. This important step is only the beginning.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

All the best resources for artificial intelligence (big data, cheap parallel computing, deep learning) are available on the Internet for cheap or free. Apache Spark seems like the best open source platform, and it is easy to run this on Amazon cloud computing. Finished books on the topic are all too preliminary, so you have to go to blogs, research papers, and other online resources.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

SOAP and traditional “large scale” web services with distributed transactions and such are no longer that important. Still needed, but the newer trend is to REST & JSON. ACID transactions are being replaced by sharded data spaces and “eventual consistency” approaches.

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James Taylor

James is a leading expert in decision management and in the development of Decision Management Systems. Experienced working with business rules, predictive analytics and other decisioning technologies to improve operational systems. Published author – Decision Management Systems (IBM Press), Smart (Enough) Systems (Prentice Hall), Real-World Decision Modeling with DMN (MK Press) – strategy consultant, writer and speaker.

WWW: http://jtonedm.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @jamet123

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

An understanding of the importance of decisions and an ability to identify and describe these decisions so they don’t get implemented piecemeal as process steps. While practitioners will find decision modeling and the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard helpful, they shouldn’t think that modeling decisions is part of modeling a process – it’s a separate activity.

An awareness of the power of advanced (predictive) analytics and how it can be applied to process analytics AND to decision-making. Analytics is a hot topic for good reason but too many BPM practitioners think about analytics only in terms of process analytics. They need also to think about how analytics can be used to improve the decisions their processes rely on.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

DMN is best learned from the book I wrote with Jan Purchase – Real World Decision Modeling with DMN – and this has a chapter on decision identification. Those looking for a quick overview might find the Microguide to BPMN and DMN that I wrote with Tom Debevoise useful.

The only real way to learn decision modeling, though, is to do it and to get mentored by someone who knows how. Classes run by practitioners – people who build decision models for a living rather than software companies or generic training companies -are also great.

The analytics industry has spawned a huge array of free online training classes. Take one.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

AI is obviously over hyped but BPM practitioners should look for subsets of AI that are useful e.g. in analyzing documents or images, replacing UIs with chatbots etc as some of these do really work.

Rules outside of decisions are done. Don’t capture rules at a process or enterprise level – model them as part of a decision model if you need to capture them.

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Roger Tregear

Roger Tregear delivers BPM education and consulting assignments, bringing to them 30 years of management consulting experience. He spends his working life talking, thinking, and writing about the analysis, improvement, innovation, and management of business processes. His work has taken him to Australia, New Zealand, Bahrain, Belgium, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and the USA.
Roger is a regular columnist for BPTrends. He is author of Practical Process (2013), co-author of Establishing the Office of Business Process Management (2011), and contributed the chapter Business Process Standardization in The International Handbook on BPM (2010, 2015). With Paul Harmon, Roger edited Questioning BPM? (2016). Roger’s iconic book, Reimagining Management, was also published in 2016. Process Precepts (2017), Roger’s latest book, involves a cosmopolitan, global team in discussions about the process of management.

WWW: http://www.leonardo.com.au
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @rogertregear

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

Having re-read my responses for last year, there is nothing I would change, so:
Process-based management (BPM as a management philosophy) is a radically different way to think about any organization and how it executes its strategy by delivering value to customer and other stakeholders. Practitioners must properly understand this big picture and then provide the leadership and communicate the ideas. They must be able to clearly describe the value proposition and sell and realize the change. The details of methods, techniques, and technologies are critically important, but the real benefits of process-based management are born of shared ideas about the cross-functional exchange of value, not models and IT systems.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Perhaps the more important question is about habits we need to lose. Effective and sustained process-based management is often about linking together much of what has been done to date and giving it a new focus on continually improving organizational performance. To get there we need to break habits like:

Thinking the M in BPM stands for modeling

Investing vast amounts in managing up and down the organization chart and very little in managing across the chart where the real action happens

Confusing BPM with IT

Thinking process management and improvement is different to innovation, automation, augmentation, transformation, and similar terms

Thinking BPM is a low level operational issue and not relevant at the executive committee/board table

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Miguel Valdés-Faura

As Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, Miguel leads the charge in Bonitasoft’s mission: to democratize Business Process Management (BPM), bringing powerful and affordable BPM to organizations and projects of all sizes. Prior to Bonitasoft, Miguel led R&D, pre-sales and support for the BPM division of Bull Information Systems, a major European systems provider. Miguel is a recognized thought-leader in business process management and passionate about open source community building.

WWW: http://www.bonitasoft.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @miguelvaldes

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2018?

With the emergence of Digital Business Platforms, BPM practitioners will be more and more involved in digital business transformation initiatives and as a result they will need to adopt the following priorities:

* Focus on digital user experiences for both customers and employees. The user experience as a whole includes a well-designed, easy-to-use user interface that is entirely supported by agile, simple, and efficient processing of all the underlying business processes.

* Improve exception management for existing services and offerings through the application of next-generation BPM technologies.

* Allocate more time and resources toward security, including consideration of how blockchain technologies might play a role.

* Invest in platforms focusing on DevOps experience, allowing developers and operators to build, test, and deploy enterprise applications more rapidly and with faster iterations.

What are the best resources to learn those skills? (e.g. books, articles, courses)

Maybe I’m a little biased, but I think the book Designing Efficient BPM Applications by Antoine Mottier and Christine McKinty gives a pretty good foundation for getting started on process-based application design.

Neil Ward-Dutton of MWD Advisors has always good insights on both technologies and the direction of BPM, and I’ve been following Jim Sinur of Aragon Research since he was with Gartner. Sandy Kemsley and Scott Francis have also been following BPM trends and technology for a long time now.

I also recommend Rob Dunie (Gartner) and Rob Koplowitz (Forrester) research on the evolution of BPM platforms and the role of BPM as an important enabler of Digital Transformation.

Jaisundar at Bouncing Thoughts and Pritiman Panda, the BPM freak!! are fun to read too.

Last but not least, experimentation is the best way to learn, and for that I recommend to leverage open source BPM technologies and communities to get started, prototype and experiment. This is how you can get started for example with Bonita OSS platform.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Number one is traditional waterfall development approaches. Customers in all industries are moving away from detailed, long-term project plans with single timelines to embrace a more iterative (agile) development approach.

Recent focus on customer-facing applications is going to accelerate demand for agile/iterative methodologies as, for example, customers will be involved through the whole development process. Projects where changes in deliverables are discouraged, or where resources, scope, and time are fixed are bound to fail.

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PS. Do you want to learn more about what to expect in 2018? Read the posts “The Year Ahead for BPM – 2018 Predictions from Top Influencers” from BPM.com and “Process Predictions for 2018” from Jim Sinur.
The post BPM Skills in 2018 – Hot or Not first appeared on BPM Tips.

BPM Skills in 2017 – Hot or Not

Zbigniew — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 07:28:51 +0000

It’s Not Your Daddy’s BPM.

Some of the things we were traditionally doing as BPM practitioners are no longer seen as important. New trends are emerging. Hype level is very high.

Do you want to know which BPM skills will be really useful in 2017?

I do

To help you focus on relevant things and skip things that will not give results this year I asked some of the best BPM experts in the world two questions:

1. What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

2. Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)

In a hurry? Get the “BPM skills in 2017” guide as a convenient, downloadable PDF.

Yes! Give me my PDF

Below you can find the answers from 26 experts. You can either read everything or use the navigation below.

Roger Burlton
Scott Draeger
Alan Fish
Ian Gotts
Sandeep Johal
Ryan Johnston
Emiel Kelly
Sandy Kemsley
Mathias Kirchmer
Harald Kühn
Marcello La Rosa
Bob Larrivee
Connie Moore
Nathaniel Palmer
Juergen Pitschke
Ian Ramsay
Adrian Reed
Pedro Robledo
Pramod Sachdeva
Alexander Samarin
Suresh Sambandam
Jim Sinur
Keith Swenson
James Taylor
John Tesmer
Miguel Valdes

Now, let’s dive into the answers.

Roger Burlton

Roger is the president of Process Renewal Consulting Group Inc. He is also co-founder of BPTrends Associates; the services firm of the world-leading BPTrends.com knowledge portal. He started the pioneering Process Renewal Group (PRG) in 1993 and was at the forefront of process-centric ways of running businesses.

He is regarded globally as a thought leader and dynamic practitioner who brings reason, clarity, and practicality to complex business architecture and business change.

Roger’s insights can be found in his acclaimed book: Business Process Management: Profiting from Process, the Business Process Manifesto, the Handbook on Business Process Management and numerous other publications including his articles featured on BPTrends.com.

Roger chairs several of the largest and most influential BPM conferences in the world and is a sought after speaker dealing with the tough issues of business change in a thought provoking and entertaining manner.

WWW: http://www.processrenewal.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @rogerburlton

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

Business Architecture that does not dismiss processes and replace them by capabilities will be essential to connect all the dots of integrated transformation.

Keeping the business model NS Business Operating model connected through value creating end to end business processes with ownership and governance. All of this must be tied to measured performance focused on the end to end for customers.

Being able to do all the process work as part of digitization of end to end processes driven by customers. The process is still the process and has to be designed for all aspects to work together.

Business analysts must learn to see their work as designing a flow of work.

Stakeholder analysis and design for EXTERNAL stakeholders putting aside the wants of internal stakeholders. It’s all about the result that the organization is mandated to deliver externally.

Connecting process performance to stakeholder value needs not departments.

Dealing with customer experience if there is general parity in the industry on the basic products and services. Example is mobile telecoms where everyone offers the same thing but the experience varies widely.

Developing cultural change skills must become part of process work.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Low level analysis of portions of an end to end.

Everything else should still be needed but on a wider end to end scale.

It is still going to take a while to get all aspects working in an organization so diligence and patience is needed.

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Scott Draeger

Scott Draeger is the Vice President of Product at GMC Software Technology. He joined the software industry in 1998, after earning a B.A. from University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He started managing processes as a document designer using several CCM technologies. He has more than 15 years of experience in the customer communication software industry as both a transactional document designer and a software vendor. Lately, he is interested in the intersection of experience design and enterprise systems.

WWW: https://www.gmc.net
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @scottdraeger

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

This year will test your organization’s flexibility. If you made an organization that is too rigid, you might find yourself in trouble. You can expect that new regulations will allow less time for you to implement the changes they require. This means that your team, tools and processes need to expect change in 2017. With this much chaos on the horizon, it would be wise to get a group together to brainstorm likely chance scenarios for more regulation, less regulation, and a events that could impact your processes. Some early brainstorming might prepare you for a variety of unanticipated situations that could catch your competitors off guard.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Process mining, because this is a year of change that will be major. It’s not a year of small tweaks that can be identified and optimized. There will be major changes for finance, insurance, utilities, government and other industries that will require rapid implementation. Process mining might regain prominence in the future, but focus on designing replacement processes quickly.

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Alan Fish

Dr Alan N Fish is Principal Consultant in Decision Solutions with FICO, having over 30 years’ experience in the support, automation and optimisation of organisational decisions. He invented the “Decision Requirements Diagram” (DRD) which exposes the structure of a domain of decision-making, and developed Decision Requirements Analysis (DRA): a methodology for building and using such decision models. He is the author of “Knowledge Automation: How To Implement Decision Management in Business Processes” (Wiley), and co-author of the OMG specification Decision Model and Notation (DMN).

WWW: http://www.fico.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @AlanNFish

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

Effective BPM requires practitioners to be aware of the principles of decision management, and to be able to model decisions formally in DMN. This allows organisational decision-making to be identified, tied to specific “decision points” in the process, and optimised. Whether decision-making is to be automated using decision services, constrained using decision support systems, or left as a free human activity, it is vital to understand the scope and structure of the decisions made, how they relate to data collected / generated by the process, and how the business knowledge applied in making the decisions is to be managed over time. Such business knowledge is a valuable corporate asset which cannot be managed unless it is first identified and modelled.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

BPMN / CMMN / DMN is becoming the de facto set of standard modelling notations. Learn these thoroughly and forget the others, and do not rely too heavily on the proprietary notations of any particular tool: knowledge of the standards is transferrable.

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Ian Gotts

Ian is a founder of Q9 Elements, tech advisor, investor, speaker and author.

Q9 Elements is a startup software company. It is looking to disrupt the BPM marketplace and enable clients to deliver huge levels of ROI.

WWW: iangotts.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @iangotts

Paradox of skills for 2017

– managing balance of evolution (continuous improvement) and revolution (digital transformation)
– deciphering techno-babble from practical, implementable, real-world solutions
– making change seem easy, yet driving pace to keep up
– staying agile whilst maintaining keeping compliance

Leave behind

– choosing a strategic BPM solution; mix and mash-up is the way forward
– thinking BPM is a standalone discipline or toolset

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Sandeep Johal

Sandeep has contributed professionally and academically to Business Process Management for 10 years. He specializes in business process modeling and governance. He currently leads a team of Business Process professionals in the United States.

His business process management practice helped accumulate years of questions and lessons which are shared through social media, videos, classes, seminars and, of course, consulting. Sandeep has presented at international conferences across Australia, United States, England, and the Middle East.

He recently developed Process Modeling Excellence, a 40 day program to establish or uplift the process modeling capability of any organization.

Sandeep is a BPTrends accredited Business Process Management Professional and has a Master of Business Process Management.

WWW: LI profile
WWW: http://www.leonardo.com.au
Twitter: @deepology

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

– Willing to change by example
– Lead when required and, more importantly, follow when needed
– Active listening
– Solid grounding of business analysis techniques (e.g. process measurement)
– Shape mind-sets of diverse stakeholders
– Driving iterative and incremental change
– Awareness of contemporary industry trends of value delivery (e.g. digital transformation)
– Use of a variety of communication channels including (but not limited) social media

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

– Big-bang change
– “Knowing the solution” or “God complex”
– Relying on traditional media alone for the traditional field of transformation
– Only having technical capability (e.g. starting with technology)

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Ryan Johnston

Ryan Johnston is the Director of Operations for Camunda Inc. in North America. He has a diverse background in business process application design and implementation, working with several of the commercial business process suites in addition to most of today’s popular open source business process suites. He sees open source solutions as flexible, powerful, and preferable alternatives to commercial enterprise software packages, allowing for more complete and robust coverage of companies’ individual business requirements.

WWW: http://www.camunda.com
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Twitter: @rjcamunda

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

The mindset of the typical BPM practitioner should be different here in 2017. In many cases, our goal just a few years ago was to implement BPM and to identify business problems we could solve along the way. Now, instead of working in reverse, we look first to solve real-world business problems, and BPM, related technologies and standards such as BPMN, CMMN and DMN are a set of tools in a larger toolbox full of customizable software products that allow businesses to solve those problems… and to gain the required competitive advantage over their rivals. If the typical BPM practitioner can shift his/her mindset to align with that reality, that person will be much more well-positioned to recommend the right tool or combination of tools to address any individual client’s needs.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the need for flexibility in today’s tools. Gone are the days where companies would buy software packages and align their processes with the capabilities of those tools, and that is why more flexible, customizable tools are gaining more and more traction. Thus, if you want to be a leading BPM practitioner these days, work to be fluent in the core concepts and strive to gain experience with tools that are malleable and can be tweaked as necessary to satisfy specific business requirements.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Two items come specifically to mind… First, we used to talk a lot about adapters to existing, proprietary enterprise systems, and that was big business. Not anymore; with the true, post-hype emergence of REST API’s literally everywhere, adapters are – in most cases – simply no longer necessary. If a tool can speak over a REST interface, then it can generally integrate with almost any enterprise software package in the market today. The only exception is Robotic Process Automation (RPA); in some cases, RPA focuses on automating how users interact with human-based user interfaces, and those “adapters” are clearly much more specialized (and not yet standardized).

Next, and perhaps more importantly, the days of proprietary coding languages and formats are numbered, much more so than they were in the past. If you’re working with a tool that leverages a proprietary coding language (or any other proprietary mechanism for building business solutions), you should seriously consider whether continuing to work in that area makes sense for your long-term career path. Even the proprietary vendors are switching more and more to open standards and/or open source software components, which is a boon for developers, architects, and their employers due to newfound skills portability.

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Emiel Kelly

Emiel has been working as a trainer and consultant for vendors of software like BPM tooling, since 1999. He also started his own initiative, Procesje.nl, a valuable source of practical and common sense information about Business Process Management and how to avoid blindly following the trends.

Emiel is known from his practical and unorthodox approach to BPM.

He is also a contributor to bpm.com where he is a very active participant of discussion forums. You can also find lots of his both informative and entertaining tweets on Twitter.

WWW: http://procesje.blogspot.nl
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Twitter: @Procesje

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

Why do companies have processes? No, not to model them. No, not to analyze them. No, not to automate them. These are just means. What’s the goal?
The goal of processes is to solve your customer’s problem(s).

So, I think the skill with most value has always been, and still will be, the skill of “listening”. And I don’t care if that is done with ears, Artificial Intelligence or IOT sensors.

Listening with the goal to find out what’s going on. To find out what problems should be solved. But don’t forget that a speedometer is quite useless if you don’t understand what the numbers tell you and don’t know how to act upon that information.

So I would add “Learning” and “Acting” to the skills. Listen, Learn, Act. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

But is it special? Absolutely not. It is what every company (and person) should do to stay relevant and be valuable. It’s an attitude and it should happen every day. It’s daily business. BPM is daily business.

And Listen, Learn, Act happens on different levels of BPM.

First of all on a more strategic level. Because our beloved processes are just a means to solve a problem. A problem of a person, a group or society. So, good BPM starts with being able to understand these problems. Being aware what is going on and provide the services or products to solve those problems.

And yes, processes need to be executed for that. The right processes. And that needs a good understanding of what are the customer’s needs and being able to adapt your collection of processes to that needs.

As said, it’s also about learn and act. So to me that means skills that enable fast process development. Although they still exist, but most processes won’t last for 20 years. A good understanding of tools and technologies that help you to continuously support the right processes seem valuable to me.
This is a trend you see. A trend I would call “Anti Enterprise Software”. No more expensive big systems that have to run for 20 years to pay a return on investment. But easy to change applications to support your processes.

Maybe it’s a little weird to talk about “throw away processes” but I believe every executed case should be a trigger for process improvement. And wouldn’t it be cool if your supporting software is built with that mindset?

That automatically brings me to a more operational level. On that level it is about understanding what is going on in your processes. What is the need of individual cases, what is the status, etc? And being able to adjust your “plan” if needed. Not by lengthy procedures and hierarchical approvement chains. But by the people who execute the processes. Process change power should be as close to the shop floor as possible. That needs a different culture.

All these points are partly wishes, partly observations, but if I had to summarize them, I would say it is about being able to turn data into valuable action on the different levels of BPM.

Technology can help with that. Isn’t E-listening what AI actually is meant for? Turning data into useful information so someone or something can act upon it. With acting being the most important. It is cool that a google car can identify there is a traffic jam ahead. But without being able to brake, that information is useless.

So, if you have to turn Listen, Learn, Act into more business terms, it would be things like data science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning and skills (and technologies of course) that enable you to easily change the systems that support your processes.

What skills are less needed?

Is it worth to talk about the skills less needed? For sure needed skills will change.

To me BPM never has been something that you do on top of, or next to, your daily business. BPM is daily business. And how you do it will change. Because of different needs or new technology.

Will 6 months of AS-IS mapping still be a thing? Will Lean still be a thing? Will process mining still be a thing? Will BPMN still be a thing? I don’t know. And that’s why we as “BPM peeps” also have to Listen, Learn and Act. To stay relevant for organizations that take “Managing by process” seriously.

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Sandy Kemsley

Sandy is a “technology catalyst” with a 20-year history of software design and systems architecture in several technology areas, combined with a deep understanding of business environments and how technology can impact them.

She has also founded and run three companies – a systems integration services company, a software product company, and current consulting company – with responsibility for corporate and financial governance, strategic direction, team hiring and management, and day-to-day technical contributions.

Sandy blogs about BPM, enterprise architecture and other intersections of business and technology at www.column2.com

WWW: https://column2.com
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Twitter: @skemsley

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

I see a continuing split in BPM practitioners inside large organizations: a process improvement group that is focused on Lean Six Sigma or other techniques for modeling and improving processes, but no awareness of automation technologies; and an IT group that uses BPM as an agile application development and orchestration tool. Both groups need to improve their skills to really make a BPM program work for their organization:

– The process improvement team needs more knowledge of how BPMN modeling tools are more than just “flowcharts on steroids”, but can allow them to provide significantly more valuable input to the IT groups in the form of executable (or nearly so) process models that match the desired business processes. By developing skills in BPMN and related modeling tools, they add another process improvement technique to their toolbox, and can provide a helpful bridge for teaching business people more about BPMN.

– The IT team needs improved skills on using agile techniques and technologies (including BPMS) in order to deliver on the promise of fast deployment and flexible systems. Too many organizations are still being sold on long, monolithic software development projects that effectively pour concrete over the current state rather than providing a platform for flexible response to business change.

In addition to these two obviously BPM practitioner groups, the “citizen developers” — typically semi-technical business analysts embedded within business groups directly — need to gain skills on using low-code BPMS to create situational applications directly and without IT involvement. They are already doing this, except they’re using inappropriate tools such as spreadsheets: it’s time to empower them by giving them enterprise-strength tools to create useful departmental apps.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Many organizations are spending significant time and energy on Lean Six Sigma programs, but not seeing a lot of benefit from them since they tend to focus on incremental improvement rather than innovation. In manufacturing and other industries where physical assets dictate a more incremental approach, these techniques will continue to dominate, but they will become less important in knowledge-based service organizations, including financial services and insurance.

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Dr. Mathias Kirchmer

As innovative out-come-driven top executive and entrepreneur, Dr. Kirchmer has successfully led organizations and teams to achieve growth and performance goals in an international environment combining business and technology initiatives. He consistently overachieved results in his different roles, including CEO, Managing Director and Chief Marketing & Innovation Officer in the consulting and software sector as well as senior adviser, mainly in manufacturing industries. Dr. Kirchmer is a visionary leader, thought leader and innovator in the field of Business Process Management (BPM). He has combined his broad business experience with his extensive academic research to deliver pioneering management approaches that have proven to be both, sustainable and provide immediate benefits.

Most recently, Dr. Kirchmer founded BPM-D, a company focused on enabling ongoing digital transformation and strategy execution through the discipline of BPM. BPM-D has shown significant market impact in a short time, leveraging its innovative solutions. Under Dr. Kirchmer’s leadership BPM-D got recognized by CIO Review as one of 20 emerging enterprise architecture solution providers and by InsightsSuccess as one of the 50 most valuable tech start-ups in the US.

Dr. Kirchmer remains involved in academia as an affiliated faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania since 1998, the Widener University, Philadelphia University and the Universidad of Chile. In 2004, he received a research and teaching fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Dr. Kirchmer is a published authority of BPM authoring 6 books and over 150 articles for a variety of publications making him a much sought after speaker and expert.

WWW: LI profile
WWW: http://bpm-d.com
Twitter: @mtki2006

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

In 2017 BPM will continue its shift form a more or less tactical internal efficiency focus towards significant external value creation. BPM becomes the management discipline for strategy execution and ongoing digitalization. It must help to focus on what really matters, improve in the context of specific organizational challenges and sustain those improvements. Rapid improvements to react to fast market changes, standardization and customer journey planning for consistently best customer experience, value-driven as well as process-led digitalization and system-implementation become typical BPM initiatives.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Narrow technical skills will be less important. From an information technology perspective more and more of the configuration and adaption of process relevant tools and application is done on a business level, hence less and less of the traditional programming is required. But also the more conventional improvement skills, like many of the Six Sigma tools, will be less important in an information rich digital world. Their application is often too slow and not sufficiently integrated into the new opportunities digitalization provides.

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Harald Kühn

Dr. Harald Kühn is a member of the management board of the BOC AG. He is responsible for the product management and the related strategic aspects of BOC’s product portfolio. Dr. Harald Kühn works in the areas of metamodelling, BPM, EA and the usage of cloud technologies in these domains.

He is an author of over 20 publications about various aspects of BPM.

WWW: boc-group.com
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Twitter: @BOC_Group

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

– Customer Journeys and Customer Touchpoint Analysis for Process Improvement
– Relating Data Governance with BPM
– Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and how this technology influences BPM

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Any knowledge and experiences gathered in the past will influence decisions for the future. Therefore, even if specific techniques or technologies are not really relevant any more, they are important to evaluate and apply new upcoming techniques and technologies. Process Mining is still a niche in the domain of BPM.

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Marcello La Rosa

Professor Marcello La Rosa is the academic director for corporate programs and partnerships at the Information Systems school of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia.

His research interests span different BPM areas, including process consolidation, mining and automation, in which he published over 80 papers. He leads the Apromore initiative (www.apromore.org) – a strategic collaboration between various universities for the development of an advanced process model repository, and coordinates QUT’s professional training program on BPM (www.bpm-training.com). Marcello has taught BPM to practitioners and students in Australia for over ten years. Based on this experience, he co-authored “Fundamentals of Business Process Management” – the first, comprehensive textbook on BPM, which has influenced the curriculum of over 100 universities in the world. Recently, using this book he co-developed a MOOC on BPM, which attracted over 7,000 participants.

WWW: marcellolarosa.com
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Twitter: @mlr80

Below you can find few good practices and common errors mentioned by Prof. Marcello La Rosa in a video interview. You can watch the full interview HERE.

Good practices:

If we want to start implementing BPM as a management practice within an organization, we need to start moving away from the scope of a single project and have an enterprise level focus to manage holistically multiple BPM projects.

We also need to prioritize the management of the various business processes from a business process architecture using their strategic importance.

The enabler for all of the above is the establishment of a sound BPM governance structure, which defines BPM decision processes, roles and responsibilities, standards and guidelines in the use of BPM methods and software tools.

Bad practices:

One of the most common errors is focusing on methods and tools rather than on the value these methods and tools should deliver for the company. For example, training 30 Green Belts when the company’s strategic priority is elsewhere: outsmarting the competitors through innovative products. Lean Six Sigma is not going to help to achieve that, yet there is no link between the choice of the methods and tools and the strategic objectives we must achieve.

Another common error is to have a siloed BPM initiative, where multiple projects are conducted in isolation from each other. Overlooking the relations (hierarchical, temporal and generalization-specialization) between business processes may lead to a situation where improving one process creates inconsistency with other processes, besides missing out on opportunities for identifying shared solutions.

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Bob Larrivee

Bob Larrivee, Vice President and Chief Analyst of Market Intelligence – AIIM.

Bob is an internationally recognized subject matter expert and thought leader with over thirty years of experience in the fields of information and process management, and recipient of the Cenadem Brazil – ECM pioneer Award. Bob is an avid techie with a focus on process improvement, and the application of advanced technologies to enhance and automate business operations.

WWW: Free eBook: What We Learned from the AIIM Community in 2016 And What We See in 2017
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Twitter: @BobLarrivee

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

I think the key is an ability to see beyond the symptoms of a problem, and get to the root cause. If the problem statement is that processing times are too slow or review cycles too long, that is an issue but not the underlying problem. Once the problem is identified, then work to resolve it. This is where process mapping is of great benefit. Document and validate the process, identify the players, and related content, then look for ways to improve that process. If possible, look to automate wherever possible, but do not put technology first, it is a tool.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

It is my belief that every skill has a time and place to be used. While some things may be considered obsolete or outdated, it is amazing how they suddenly become relevant again, when nothing else works. It is also my belief that skills learned and acquired, while they may not applicable to a current situation, is knowledge gained that provides enhanced insight into that which could be, when the time is right. For example, I once trained to become a Certified Insurance Services Representative and gained my certification in that field, yet I never worked in the insurance industry. Years later, working for a software solution s provider, I was able to apply that knowledge when addressing the insurance sector to enhance their content management environments and improve their operational processes.

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Connie Moore

As Senior Vice President of Research at Digital Clarity Group, Connie has unparalleled experience working with senior executives in business and IT, technology marketing, and government, from SMEs to large enterprises throughout the globe. She has managed international teams of analysts focused on a wide range of technologies such as social and collaboration, content management, business analytics, business software (e.g. ERP, CRM, HCM), and BPM suites. Her research encompasses business transformation, business process management, customer experience management, information management, the future of work, new business models and organizational change management. Connie is highly sought as a keynote speaker and conference chair on five continents. This year, she was honored by her peer group for thought leadership in business process transformation, adaptive case management and BPM software when she received the highly coveted Marvin Manheim Award from the Workflow and Reengineering Association (WARIA).

Prior to DCG, Connie was a Vice President, Principal Analyst and Research Director at Forrester Research for more than 20 years, where she pioneered new data-driven research on global Bring Your Own Technology trends, forecasted and defined the next generation of business suites, and drove innovative dialog among marketing, business process and IT senior executives about how to succeed at large-scale business transformation.

WWW: LI profile
WWW: http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com
Twitter: @cmooreclarity

Skills that business process practitioners need to continue are:

– Process transformation/improvement methodology skills, particularly Lean and Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma. Use Lean for initiatives that involve analyzing the big picture and use Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma to analyze and drill down into a specific part of a business process.

– Organizational change management. This perennial topic comes up with virtually every project because it is a big possible point of failure. Skills in change management could include the ADKAR methodology from Prosci or it could be more specialized, even “home grown” methodologies. Conferences that focus on operational excellence are good events for learning more about how business process executives have successfully tackled organizational change. No matter what methodology or technique the practitioner uses, it’s vitally important that the practitioner and executives focus on communication, communication, communication.

New skills that business practitioners should add:

– Entity modeling is a different way to model processes that is being supported by a number of BPM vendors. It is a significantly superior way to build processes, particularly for dynamic processes and for situations where many processes are being automated in parallel. Business analysts and development teams should develop or deepen their skills in this modeling approach. (see references below)

– Customer journey mapping is important for business process practitioners to understand. Often related initiatives are being pursued, unbeknownst to the different teams, that are related to the same business process. BPM teams may be looking at how a cross-functional process works within or inside the organization, while marketing and customer experience teams may be looking at the same cross-functional process from the outside in perspective. The BPM team is most likely using a process modeling tool while the customer journey team is most likely using a journey mapping tool. These two teams may discover each other at some point in their unintegrated projects, and decide to join forces or at least collaborative. At that point, it is helpful to know and understand the journey mapping tooling the customer experience team uses.

– Net promoter scores are important KPI metrics for executive dashboards, and business process practitioners need to understand how they work and how to integrate them into the BPM reporting and monitoring system.

– Analytics are everywhere, and this explosive growth will only continue over time. BPM practitioners need a working understanding of analytics, whether it is analytics for monitoring process results, predictive analytics that initiate steps in a process or something else. Having a working knowledge of analytics will be very helpful.

References:
http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com/use-change-management-build-operational-excellence-culture/

http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com/role-organizational-change-management/

http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com/podcast-entity-modeling-business-process-management/

http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com/entity-modeling-simplified-business-process-automation/

http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com/transform-customer-experience-and-operational-excellence-by-going-digital-outside-and-inside/

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Nathaniel Palmer

Rated as the #1 Most Influential Thought Leader in Business Process Management (BPM) by independent research, Nathaniel Palmer is recognized as one of the early originators of BPM, and has led the design for some of the industry’s largest-scale and most complex projects involving investments of $200 Million or more. Today he is the Editor-in-Chief of BPM.com, as well as the Executive Director of the Workflow Management Coalition, as well as VP and CTO of BPM, Inc. Previously he had been the BPM Practice Director of SRA International, and prior to that Director, Business Consulting for Perot Systems Corp, as well as spent over a decade with Delphi Group serving as VP and CTO.

He frequently tops the lists of the most recognized names in his field, and was the first individual named as Laureate in Workflow. Nathaniel has authored or co-authored a dozen books on process innovation and business transformation, including “Intelligent BPM” (2013), “How Knowledge Workers Get Things Done” (2012), “Social BPM” (2011), “Mastering the Unpredictable” (2008) which reached #2 on the Amazon.com Best Seller’s List, “Excellence in Practice” (2007), “Encyclopedia of Database Systems” (2007) and “The X-Economy” (2001). He has been featured in numerous media ranging from Fortune to The New York Times to National Public Radio. Nathaniel holds a DISCO Secret Clearance as well as a Position of Trust with in the U.S. federal government.

WWW: BPM.com
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Twitter: @nathanielpalmer

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

Three skills which represent even greater opportunity BPM practitioners to deliver value are 1) User (or Customer) Journey Mapping; 2) Data Modeling and Analysis; 3) Decision Modeling. Overall, process modeling remains a critical skill set, and one of the greatest challenge for new hires (hiring managers) among BPM practitioner teams the general lack of ability to properly represent and differentiates process, data and rules.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

In 2017, Lean Six Sigma will remain no longer relevant, likely the least relevant, and closely large architecture frameworks (TOGAF, et al.) in contrast with localized business architecture practices and leverage of standard notations such as Archimate.

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Juergen Pitschke

Juergen Pitschke is Partner and Managing Director at Process Renewal Group Deutschland.

Juergen has more than 25 years industrial experience about enterprise modelling and the realization of Business and IT Architectures. He is recognized for his deep knowledge and the systematic use of visual standard notations and of different frameworks für the design of an Enterpirse Architecture. His knowledge is often sought in the field of Business Process Management and Decision Management.
His focus are model-based approaches for enterprise design and their practical use. Clients value his abilities to explain concepts, to help teams to adopt and successfully apply such methods, and to guide projects successfully.

He is author of the book “Unternehmensmodellierung für die Praxis”. He translated the Business Process Manifesto, the Decision Management Manifesto, and the RuleSpeak® – approach into German.

His customers include companies as Kuehne+Nagel (AG & Co.) KG, Boehler Edelstahl or organizations like the Federal Office of Police in Switzerland.

WWW: http://processrenewal.de
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Twitter: @jpitschke

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

Decision Management: I mean not only learning the notation Decision Model and Notation (DMN). But to understand more application areas. Decision Management is important not only for compliance. Other important use cases in the context of BPM are improving communication and using Decision Management for predictions.

We need to improve our soft skills to apply traditional and new concepts. How can we apply new techniques?

Another field to look for are BPM-Systems for implementing. We see a discussion about “zero-code”-systems. But complex individual applications need sometimes more complex features. I believe that we will see more frameworks for different areas which combine process engines with complex application frameworks.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

… no longer relevant …
We are fast to declare something irrelevant. I believe you can learn a lot from traditional techniques and methods, also from other fields and industries. Try to understand what was the goal, what was good, what was not workinng. Combine with new techniques and methods. It is always good to have many techniques in your toolbox.

…not yet …
I give the same answer: Understand what is not yet working and what is the goal. CMMN is such a hype topic. We see CMMN in systems and used by experts. But how to explain it to “normal” users? Or who is the target audience for such a concept?
I mentioned the use of decision management for predictive analytics. We have the same issue: Who is the target audience? How to explain and use in a practical way?

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Ian Ramsay

Ian Ramsay works as an independent consultant in Business Process Change and Automation specialising in complex financial service operations.

He was a founding partner in a successful BPM Software Platform business and has since been engaged in the real-world design and delivery of major process automation solutions. His work includes a patent for an innovative business rules algorithm and engine.

Ian was a founding member of the original BPMN Standards Group and contributed to the V1.0 specification. He holds a Degree in Systems Engineering and Computer Science, Business Administration and is an accomplished LEAN 6-Sigma practitioner.

Currently, Ian is engaged in commercialising a radically new and cost-effective approach to Business Process Analysis, Design and Execution with an associated book.

WWW: http://www.8020bpm.com
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What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

Despite a number of potentially useful standards, BPMN and DMN come to mind, the range of technical implementation platforms is now more diverse than ever and few standards prevail. So technical BPM practitioners need to become ever more skilled in fewer vendor platforms. Perhaps just one. I expect AI based services to be soon woven into BPM data structuring and decision making introducing the new role of Process Knowledge Engineer.

Business Architecture has emerged more recently as an important (and long overdue) BPM role. Avoiding the definition of impossible or uneconomic solutions, with the diversity of quite technical BPM tools and approaches, demands that BPM analysts, of all levels, must also possess a solid appreciation of implementation technologies. Unfortunately, BPM technology still influences the business solution design.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

Effective process management, automated or otherwise, is totally dependent upon data. Especially structured: process, reference and business data. This fundamental reality is often been overlooked (typically by sales and market marketing). It emerges to be the major cause of BPM delivery failure and business value destruction.

The rapid corporate adoption of simple, secure and performant REST services has more recently eliminated the need for an expensive, parallel data integration / ESB programme to underpin BPM value creation. The need for highly paid Integration Engineers is diminished.

REST services also opens the door to an abundance of cost-effective externally hosted services to add even more BPM business value.

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Adrian Reed

Adrian Reed is a true advocate of the analysis profession. In his day job, he acts as Principal Consultant and Director at Blackmetric Business Solutions where he provides business analysis consultancy and training solutions to a range of clients in varying industries. Adrian is President of the UK chapter of the IIBA and he speaks internationally on topics relating to business analysis and business change. You can read Adrian’s blog at http://www.adrianreed.co.uk and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/UKAdrianReed.

WWW: http://www.adrianreed.co.uk
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Twitter: @UKAdrianReed

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

Now that is an interesting question! The words that jumps out at me is the phrase ‘create value’. I think that as practitioners we often assume that there is an instinctive understanding of what value is. Yet, so often in organisations there are different perceptions and perspectives on this thorny topic. In fact I suspect we’ve all worked in organisations where some of our stakeholders haven’t really considered the value they are seeking!

With this in mind, I think a really useful skill is the ability to understand people’s perspectives and to help define the value that organisations are seeking. Is ‘quicker’ better–if so why? Is ‘cheaper’ better, if so why? This involves understanding organisational strategy, linking that strategy to BPM as well as change projects, process improvement initiatives and so forth. It also involves ensuring we have a firm understanding of our organisations external environment, value proposition, and the value expectations of its customers. After all, if a product is positioned at the luxury end of the market, then its customer support processes are probably very different to one at the economy end of the market–and it’s crucial that we know that!

Understanding value has another advantage. In linking BPM to value, we make it easier to ‘sell’ to our stakeholders. We position BPM & analysis against that business value.

I think we’re also seeing a shift towards a (very sensible) view that it isn’t really possible to ‘create value’–or certainly not in isolation. What we can create are the conditions where value can emerge. I.e. we work with stakeholders to co-create value. This might sound very abstract, but it’s actually really important. It shows the need for a rich and deep connection with our stakeholders–from top to bottom of the organisation–and reinforces the need for us to spend time knowing them, networking with them and understanding their worlds.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I’m not sure that any skills are completely irrelevant, but I think that we are seeing that the borders between disciplines are becoming more and more blurry. Perhaps, going back a few years, there were certain tasks/techniques that were seen as within BPM and others that were seen as outside of this. The same with business architecture, business analysis, and other intersecting disciplines. I think we’re seeing a really positive growth of interdisciplinary communities, and that is such an exciting thing. It’s not ‘either/or’ it can be ‘both’.

So, one thing that is no longer relevant (or no long as relevant as it used to be) is the expectation of fixed silos. It’s far more about experienced people doing awesome work to co-create value.

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Pedro Robledo

One of the most influential Spanish thought leader in Process Management using BPM, as for +15 years he has been dedicated to promote industry awareness of Business Process Management in Spain and Latin America. Director and Professor of BPM Master in UNIR. BPM Interim Manager for helping Organizations in its BPM and Digital Transformation initiatives. International Speaker about BPM. Since 2013 participates as jury of the WfMC Awards for Excellence in BPM and Workflow. He writes about BPM and Digital Transformation in his blog: El Libro Blanco Sobre La Gestión de Procesos.

WWW: LI profile
WWW: Blog
Twitter: @pedrorobledoBPM

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

In 2017, all BPM practitioners need to pay attention to the value of Business Process Management in Digital Transformation, so their roles are very important in the transformation journey. So they need to focus add skills in technical disruption forces (SMACT – Social Mobile Analytics Cloud Things) in order to manage BPM projects where it should be possible to use Process Management Social Networks, Streaming Analytics and Big Data, Mobile Process Management, Event Processing and Internet of Things.

But, due to the cultural change of the Digital Transformation and BPM implementation, it is important to improve the skills focus on how to make an effective communication, empathy and relationship with all stakeholders to get the cultural change without rejections.

Another important consideration is to be focused on methodologies of continous improvement (Lean, SixSigma and TOC), as companies are more aware of applying these methodologies for business and process improvement.

And the last skill but not the least, Adaptive Case Management skills, as more and more companies wants to implement structured processes and not-structured processes.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

All the skills are relevant as BPM maturity is low in the market yet, and the professionals need business knowledge and technology expertise of the all BPM lifecycle to advance in the maturity and to be able to develop the process transformation with the new value chain in the digital transformation of a company. But it is required to advance in terms of the focus, as many companies need to change the perception of what is a BPM Project, as it is not a Project of Technology, but a Management Project to optimize the Business Processes aligned with the Corporate Strategy.

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Pramod Sachdeva

Pramod Sachdeva is the Founder and Managing Director at Princeton Blue. Pramod has been an evangelist for Digital Transformation using BPM, Business Rules and Cognitive technologies since he founded Princeton Blue over a decade ago. With over 30 years of business and technology consulting experience, Pramod brings tremendous knowledge to help clients navigate their digital transformation journey. Pramod’s vision has helped Princeton Blue get recognized as a high-profile thought leader in delivering digital transformation by leading industry analysts.

WWW: http://princetonblue.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @princetonblue

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

You’ll be amazed how many BPM projects don’t go back and measure the actual ROI vs the promised ROI. More often than not, the project team is more focused on delivering the technical challenges and less on quantifying the business value. Business value assessment and process performance measurement skills will help more clients justify the need to grow BPM from a project to an enterprise program.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

One of the features that differentiated iBPMS from its predecessors (BPM and Workflow) was Process Simulation – a capability we hardly see clients use these days. The promise of 100% code-free BPM development is not too far in the future. From a one-click responsive mobile application to low-code development, today’s leading BPM platforms allow non-Computer Science majors to develop quality BPM solutions in weeks.

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Alexander Samarin

Alexander Samarin is an Architect for Achieving the Synergy between Strategy, Good Business Practices and Disruptive Digital Technologies

WWW: Blog
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @samarin

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

a) be able to think out-of-the-box, e.g. how to use BPM outside enterprises, for example, apply BPM to bigger (than an enterprise) domains: healthcare, digital contracts, IoT , smart-home.

b) consider flows-of-events (streams) and find synergy between Event Processing Networks (EPN) and BPM (http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.ch/2016/12/enterprise-patterns-cesar-entarch.html , http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.ch/2011/01/explicit-event-processing-agents-in.html, http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.ch/2011/01/from-epn-to-bpmn.html)

c) bring the power of microservices to BPM to achieve “Extreme delivery” practices (see http://improving-bpm-systems.blogspot.ch/search/label/%23microservices)

d) carry out transformation as a set of small inter-related projects (“saucisson” pattern)

e) become friends with business architects, solution architects and enterprise architects

f) remember the laws of BPM

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

a) pure agile because it is very bad for BPM

b) just documenting implicit business processes

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Suresh Sambandam

Suresh Sambandam is the Founder and CEO of OrangeScape Technologies. He is an investor, speaker, and has few patents to his credit. He has been disrupting the BPM industry with KiSSFLOW.

WWW: https://kissflow.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @sureshsambandam

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

– Most BPM practitioners are good at process design but very bad at data mining. Data and processes must go hand in hand to build effective process automation. Data modelling is analogous to proper payload, proper modelling, etc. It’s high time that BPM practitioners understand the importance of data modelling.

– Data analytics skills will be continue to be very important. Even though many BPM tools give process statistics and pre-processed reports, companies are still going to want custom reporting, and practitioners should be familiar with tools like Tableau, drilldown charts, pivots, etc.

– Predictive modelling through machine learning will be the thing that sets apart the elite BPM practitioners of the future. We should already be employing machine learning techniques that will find new patterns and correlations that weren’t thought of before to forecast better opportunities.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

– BPEL has become completely obsolete and has been fully replaced by BPMN

– Process simulation sound like an interesting option, but when it comes to practical applications, it is way to complicated to use. In many cases, process simulation just breaks down.

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Jim Sinur

Jim Sinur is an independent thought leader in applying business process management (BPM) to innovative digital organizations. His research and areas of personal experience focus on business process innovation, business modeling, business process management technology (iBPMS), process collaboration for knowledge workers, process intelligence/optimization, business policy/rule management (BRMS), and leveraging business applications in processes. Jim is also one of the authors of BPM: The Next Wave. His latest book is Digital Transformation. Innovate or Die Slowly.

WWW: http://jimsinur.blogspot.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @JimSinur

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

There are a number of skills that BPM folks could pick up as there are many coming out of the digital evolution, but my top seven would be the following:
– Journey Mapping for Customers, Employees and Partners
– Embedded Advanced Analytic and Augmented Reality Capabilities
– Adaptive and Goal Driven Processes (often in Case Management and also Explicit Rule enabled)
– AI looking for opportunities to add automation or more smarts like Robotic Program Automation (RPA)
– Cognitive Collaboration for Knowledge Intense Processes or Cases
– Signal and Pattern Detection (often needed for agility, IoT and business strategy)
– Merging Control on the Edge with Central Control

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

While there are no skills that one should drop, there are several that are considered common and receding. My top three would be the following:
– Central Control Mentality
– Water Fall project methods are taking a second seat to incremental development, RPA and rapid experimentation,
– Large blocks of frozen code are giving way to components, micro services and late binding rules and constraints

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Keith Swenson

Keith Swenson is Vice President of Research and Development at Fujitsu North America and also the Chairman of the Workflow Management Coalition. As a speaker, author, and contributor to many workflow and BPM standards, he is known for having been a pioneer in collaboration software and web services. He has led agile software development teams at MS2, Netscape, Ashton Tate & Fujitsu. He won the 2004 Marvin L. Manheim Award for outstanding contributions in the field of workflow. Co-author on more than 10 books. His latest book, “When Thinking Matters in the Workplace,” explains how to avoid stifling creativity and enhance innovation through the appropriate use of process technology. His 2010 book “Mastering the Unpredictable” introduced and defined the field of adaptive case management and established him as a Top Influencer in the field of case management. He blogs at https://social-biz.org/.

WWW: https://social-biz.org
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @swensonkeith

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

The BPM analyst often believes that it is all about drawing the process. Well, yes it is. Drawing the process is critical. But it turns out that is the easy part. With modern process modeling tools, I am finding that only about 5% of the time is spent drawing the process model. Indeed, that 5% is saving a ton of work that you would have had to do without the process model, so it saves many times more than you spend on it. But what I am finding is that most of the time – the bulk, maybe 40% to 50% — is purely on UI implementation. Users don’t want static forms, and they don’t just type values. They want ability to search and look things up, to validate values, to prompt with previous values, and all of this interaction has nothing to do with the business process, and everything to do with creating a good user interface. The BPM practitioner must know how to make a good UI.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

There was a fad long ago (around 2008) for pushing a process language called BPEL. That is completely irrelevant now. The problem was that BPEL worked in a completely different manner than BPMN did, and thus the translation from BPMN to BPEL was imperfect, and only caused errors. Current implementations just execute the BPMN directly.

Use of XML is fading. While it is still used a lot, newer implementations are switching to JSON data transfer.

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James Taylor

James is a leading expert in decision management and in the development of Decision Management Systems. Experienced working with business rules, predictive analytics and other decisioning technologies to improve operational systems. Published author – Decision Management Systems (IBM Press), Smart (Enough) Systems (Prentice Hall), Real-World Decision Modeling with DMN (MK Press) – strategy consultant, writer and speaker.

WWW: http://jtonedm.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @jamet123

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

– Decision Modeling and the DMN standard
– Predictive analytics (not just process analytics)
– Declarative modeling

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

– Modeling business rules outside the context of decisions
– Embedding business rules directly into processes
– Procedural documentation

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John Tesmer

As director of the group responsible for managing APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking® database and the Process Classification Framework®, John Tesmer coordinates benchmarking projects and is responsible for innovation in benchmarking processes and development of APQC’s various process classification frameworks. John has led the development of APQC’s benchmarking tools, including the benchmarking portal, the Benchmarks on Demand service, and the ongoing development of APQC’s Process Classification Framework to help users accelerate benchmarking, content management, and defining of business processes.

WWW: https://www.apqc.org
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @johngtesmer

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

BPM practitioners in 2017 need to identify or create an holistic framework for thinking about process management in their organization. It’s time to start managing processes holistically within your organization, and that means integration with strategy, process improvement, IT, and more. You need to push your leaders and colleagues to all begin using a common terminology to represent all aspects of process management that need attention and control. Stop thinking in point solutions that address the current burning platform and one-off improvement-fests. Build a strong process management culture in 2017.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

The hype meter on analytics, neural networks, smart machines, enterprise IOT, intelligent automation, and more is going to blow thru the roof in 2017 as consumer applications of this stuff really hit the main stream and niches within enterprises are finding success. Don’t get burned on this by trying to implement it in your enterprise right now. It’s not time yet to replace your people with process automating robots – but know that wave of innovation is coming in the next decade. Start making sure that your culture, processes, and data are ready. Make sure your executives can understand how this massive change will affect your organization in the coming years. Create an environment where your people can continue to add value in the face of ever-increasing automation.

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Miguel Valdés-Faura

As Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, Miguel leads the charge in Bonitasoft’s mission: to democratize Business Process Management (BPM), bringing powerful and affordable BPM to organizations and projects of all sizes. Prior to Bonitasoft, Miguel led R&D, pre-sales and support for the BPM division of Bull Information Systems, a major European systems provider. Miguel is a recognized thought-leader in business process management and passionate about open source community building.

WWW: http://www.bonitasoft.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @miguelvaldes

What are the skills and techniques that can help BPM practitioners create value for their organizations in 2017?

I see more and more demand for highly personalized user interfaces in BPM applications. User Interfaces in which BPM practitioners focus on end users, decides on the level of process details revealed and make things such ergonomics, design and accessibility a priority.

Highly personalized UIs is an essential piece of what I call “process-based applications”. Those applications are a highly viable alternative to custom development. With the additional advantage that the resulting applications can be changed after deployment, on the fly, to keep up with changing business needs.

Which skills are no longer relevant or not practically applicable yet (hype)?

I would say that traditional BPM simulation techniques are not relevant anymore (aka, evaluation of the way processes runs under different resource availabilities and different load profiles).

Traditional BPM simulation is usually based on specified number of iterations over a specified period of time and are run either with simulated data or with assigned probabilities.

Business are more and more used to work with bigdata and predictive analytics technologies so now its all about real-time data

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The post BPM Skills in 2017 – Hot or Not first appeared on BPM Tips.

BPM books – 2017 reading list

Zbigniew — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 21:00:21 +0000

Do you want to learn more about Business Process Management? Below you can find a list of BPM related books that I have read and recommend as well as those that I plan to read.

Most of the books below are Kindle eBooks, which is my preferred format of reading, but usually you can buy them in various formats.

For the books published by Future Strategies you can use the code BPMEE provided by our friends from BPM Eastern Europe to get a lower price (which is useful if you are buying few copies of print version).

My 2016 reading list

BPMN 2.0 Handbook Second Edition
Robert Shapiro, Stephen A. White PhD, Conrad Bock, Nathaniel Palmer, Michael zur Muehlen PhD, Prof. Marco Brambilla, Denis Gagné et al

What I like in this book is broad overview of various aspects of BPMN from many experts. Plus it has a chapter about making BPMN fit for business with ADONIS

BPMN Method and Style, Second Edition, with BPMN Implementer’s Guide
Bruce Silver

First edition of this book convinced me that BPMN is not too complicated for business users and helped me understand many of the BPMN silent assumptions. Highly recommended.

Business Process Change, Second Edition: A Guide for Business Managers and BPM and Six Sigma Professionals
Paul Harmon

Useful overview of BPM-related tools and methods. I always have it next to my desk at work.

Business Process Management: Profiting From Process
Roger Burlton

I bought it after my colleague from work told me about Roger Burlton and his methodology. Very useful.

Digital Transformation: A Brief Guide For Game Changers
Jim Sinur, Peter Fingar

Bought it after interview with Jim Sinur to learn more about Digital Transformation. It’s a very useful book with lots of practical strategies and case studies.

How to Start a Business Analyst Career
Laura Brandenburg

Very useful book for people who want to start a career as a Business Analyst or (like in my case) wish to understand better how Business Analysts work. Helped me a lot with content preparation for my course BPMN for Business Analysts on Udemy.

Prozessmanagement für Experten: Impulse für aktuelle und wiederkehrende Themen
Franz Bayer, Harald Kühn

Great book written by my colleagues from work. My #1 motivation for learning German – still cannot order a meal, but know how to name most of the BPMN elements and what are Kernprozesse already

Questioning BPM?
Paul Harmon, Roger Tregear plus over 30 BPM experts

As the name suggests this is a book with questions (and answers). 33 experts answer most burning questions about BPM today. Many important perspectives and lots of useful ideas. Left five star review on Amazon.

Reimagining Management
Roger Tregear

I got this book for review before it was published and loved it. It gives you actionable tips for various stages of BPM implementation in organization.

My 2017 reading list

After running BPM Value Summit and preparing several roundup posts (on BPMN, DMN, BPM skills and selling BPM in organizations) with contributions from over 60 experts one of my resolutions for 2017 is to keep learning from the best (and share with you what I learn).

Below you can find a list of books which I plan to read.
If you can recommend one of them (or some other books) please leave a comment.

BPM

BPM Boots on the Ground: How to Implement Strategic Business Process Management: Lessons Learned from one of the World’s Largest Organizations
Jim Boots

Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures
Mathias Weske

Business Process Management: The Next Wave
Jim Sinur, James Odell, Peter Fingar

Fundamentals of Business Process Management
Marlon Dumas, Marcello La Rosa, Jan Mendling, Hajo Reijers

Passports to Success in BPM; Real-World, Theory and Applications
Nathaniel Palmer, Frank Kowalkowski, Peter Schooff, Mark von Rosing, Henrik von Scheel, Lloyd Dugan

Publisher link (use code BPMEE for a lower price): https://bpm-books.com/products/passports-to-success-in-bpm

Why / Por qué BPM?: Business Process Management
Pedro Robledo

Social BPM: Work, Planning and Collaboration Under the Impact of Social Technology
Keith Swenson, Nathaniel Palmer, Sandy Kemsley, Keith Harrison-Broninski, Max Pucher

Publisher link (use code BPMEE for a lower price): https://bpm-books.com/products/social-bpm-print-edition

The Art of Business Process Management: BPM Strategy and Real-World Execution
Nathaniel Palmer, Linus Chow, Dr Mathias Kirchmer, Robert Shapiro

Publisher link (use code BPMEE for a lower price): https://bpm-books.com/products/the-art-of-business-process-management-print-edition

BPMN, CMMN, DMN

DMN Method and Style: The Practitioner’s Guide to Decision Modeling with Business Rules
Bruce Silver

Real-Life BPMN (3rd edition): With introductions to CMMN and DMN
Jakob Freund, Bernd Rücker

Real-World Decision Modeling with DMN
James Taylor, Jan Purchase

The MicroGuide to Process and Decision Modeling in BPMN/DMN: Building More Effective Processes by Integrating Process Modeling with Decision Modeling
James Taylor, Tom Debevoise

Decision Management

Business Rule Concepts
Ronald G. Ross

Decision Management Systems: A Practical Guide to Using Business Rules and Predictive Analytics
James Taylor

Knowledge Automation: How to Implement Decision Management in Business Processes
Alan N. Fish

The Decision Model: A Business Logic Framework Linking Business and Technology
Barbara von Halle, Larry Goldberg

DMN in Action with OpenRules: A Practical Guide for Development of Business Rules and Decision Management Applications using Decision Model and Notation (DMN) and OpenRules
Jacob Feldman

Techniques relevant for BPM practitioners

Be a Great Problem Solver – Now!
Adrian Reed

Best Practices for Knowledge Workers: Innovation in Adaptive Case Management
Nathaniel Palmer, Keith Swenson, Jim Sinur et al

Publisher link (use code BPMEE for a lower price): https://bpm-books.com/products/best-practices-to-support-knowledge-workers-print

Common Approach – Uncommon Results: How Adoption Delivers the Results You Deserve
Ian Gotts, Richard Parker

IMPORTANT: please note comment from Ian below: he has number of copies and is happy to donate them. Thanks Ian!

Design Thinking Methodology Book
Emrah Yayici

Empowering Knowledge Workers
Nathaniel Palmer, Keith Swenson, Steinar Carlsen

Publisher link (use code BPMEE for a lower price): https://bpm-books.com/products/empowering-knowledge-workers-print-edition

Operational Leadership
Andrew Spanyi

Outside-In. the Secret of the 21st Century Leading Companies
Steve Towers

Process Mining: Data Science in Action
Wil M.P. van der Aalst

Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development
Alec Sharp, Patrick McDermott

Business Analysis

Business Analysis: Best Practices for Success
Steven Blais

Business Analysis For Dummies
Kupe Kupersmith, Paul Mulvey, Kate McGoey

Software Requirements
Karl Wiegers, Joy Beatty

Visual Models for Software Requirements
Anthony Chen, Joy Beatty

Addendum

Thanks for your great comments suggesting more valuable books!

Marco Fargnoli recommends two books by Andrew Spanyi:

Business Process Management (BPM) is a Team Sport: Play it to Win!
Andrew Spanyi

More for Less: The Power of Process Management
Andrew Spanyi

Scott Francis posted about this list of BPM books and suggested two more:

Business Process Management: The Third Wave
Howard Smith, Peter Fingar

BPM Everywhere
Nathaniel Palmer, Keith Swenson, Peter Fingar, Reddy Surendra et al.
The post BPM books – 2017 reading list first appeared on BPM Tips.

Decision Management with DMN in practice

Zbigniew — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 23:44:04 +0000

One of the “hot BPM topics” for 2016 is Decision Management. Decision Model and Notation (DMN) is gaining more and more popularity being endorsed by BABOK and having 4 presentations at bpmNEXT 2016.

To help you get started with Decision Model and Notation I asked some of the best DMN experts in the world the following questions:

1. In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?
2. What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

Below you can find great insights from DMN experts, which will help you understand better when and how to use it.

RSS readers can access latest version of the post here.

The post has over 7000 words, so navigation below may help you a bit:

Arash Aghlara
Felix Brandmayr
Nick Broom
Tom DeBevoise
Lloyd Dugan
Marlon Dumas
Alan Fish
Larry Goldberg
Gary Hallmark
Juergen Pitschke
Mihail Popov
Tobias Rausch
Ron Ross and Gladys Lam
Tim Stephenson
James Taylor
Jan Vanthienen
Mathias Weske

Now, let’s dive into the answers.

Arash Aghlara

Arash is a Principal Architect and Founder at Pliant Framework. He is responsible for providing guidance, expertise and technical leadership in application architecture and design, and data management. Arash works with product team and customers to identify technical hurdles and create innovative solutions across the FlexRule product lines.

WWW: Company blog
Twitter: @aghlara

In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

This is not a decision based on industry selection criteria. This is a decision based on the complexity of business domain and the business rules that are deriving the decisions in higher level. Rules are the first class citizen of systems (either automated or manual). Scaling the rules driven system is always challenging, the benefit of DMN approach is that it allows you to scale your rules in a reusable clear way.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

The first step is to really understand and distinction between business logic (i.e. process) and decisions (i.e. use-cases based on rules for example eligibility check…). And once that concept is clear, using a DMN tool (e.g. http://www.flexrule.com/dmn) that not only allows you model, but deploy the model as a service (http://www.flexrule.com/server) as a single source of truth across organisation.

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Felix Brandmayr

Felix Brandmayr works as consultant in the field of business process management for the BOC Group. He has several years of experience in implementing organisational and technical projects in a broad range of industries. Since the release of the new OMG standard, Felix Brandmayr has been successfully supporting organisations in establishing tailored DMN systems.

WWW: LI profile

In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

As an industry independent notation, DMN can basically be used in all industries and by all organisation forms. However, we see in our projects that DMN can be a very useful notation for organisations, where processes are supported by rule based applications with fast changing business rules. This applies primarily to the financial service industry, energy and furthermore to (large) service and ICT providers. If BPMN is already in use, DMN is the consequent choice to model and eventually execute business rules.
This does not mean, that every organisation that already uses BPMN successfully, gets value from integrating DMN to their processes. It highly depends on the focus and the target group of the BPM initiative.
Professionals that are experienced in managing processes, do not necessarily have the right skill set to define accurate DMN models. With the current DMN version, IT professionals and business analysts are more suited to model and understand DMN.
For DMN models that are defined by business a reduced “DMN light” notation for documentation rather than for execution purposes, may be applied. A professional modelling tool like ADONIS provides the needed functionality for all involved stakeholder.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

In general, every organisation needs to get a clear picture what the benefits are that are expected to be gained by implementing DMN. Then the scope of applying DMN has to be defined. Topics like the integration of DMN with BPM, the extent of involving business, and how to keep the decision models up to date should be adressed early. In a next step it is advised to challenge the DMN approach in a representative pilot and get results in a well-defined area. When proceeding with using DMN, constantly check if the aimed benefits can be obtained.

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Nick Broom

Nick Broom is an independent Business Architecture and Business Analysis professional, specialising in Business Process Modelling and Decision Management, with a focus on employing those techniques in Agile and iterative development environments.

WWW: Company blog
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @HorizonBizArch

In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

Any and all! Decisions are everywhere and they’re typically made in the context of a process. You don’t have to have a dedicated decision modelling initiative; there will be uses for DMN in every industry and project, what will vary is how those decisions are implemented. A logistics company might want to determine the best delivery method for you based on location and cost requirements; a nursing regulator will want to determine your registration status on whether you’ve completed enough learning and practice in the last few years; a retailer may want to determine which locations to increase stock of certain products based on demographic and current sales figures. Decisions are made in all organisations and that means DMN can be as well. Most of the examples out there will be financial services, but that’s just because it’s the industry where most of the practitioners have first made their mark.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

Ironically, I’d advocate stepping back first – take a broad look at the topic of decision management first. You will then understand what decision management is designed to do and what it’s benefits are. You’ll also discover all of the ‘prior art’ that has come before DMN. Ultimately, DMN is just a notation, built from the years of practice and learning of a diverse group of people. DMN has its limits right now – it’s a new standard and it’s developing. Look at UML and BPMN – both solidified at 2.0. That shouldn’t put anyone off, but if you understand what it’s trying to do, then you’ll know better how to use it and, more invaluably, how to improve it based on your own practical experience.
Take a look at some literature – books are starting to come out in 2016 and there’s plenty of discussion on LinkedIn. Take training courses, be curious, play around with it, get it wrong, learn from those mistakes, become invested in it. Use Excel to model tables, make use of trial versions of tooling. The field is new and no one consultant or tool provider has the answer yet.

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Tom DeBevoise

Tom DeBevoise is a Chief Evangelist Business Decision Managent at Signavio. For over 20 years, his passion has been creating and developing next-generation solutions that take his clients to where they need to go – no matter how complex or difficult the challenges. Tom has done this in industries where technology matters the most: Physical Security, Financials, Petroleum Logistics, Pharmaceutical, and Industrial Manufacturing.
His recent book is titled “The MicroGuide to Process Modeling and Decision Modeling in BPMN/DMN 1.1”.

WWW: LI profile
WWW: Blog
Twitter: @tomdebevoise

Every day, most corporations make thousands if not millions of decisions. These decisions can be buried in the applications and processes that carry out business operations and they are made by your customers support and sales representatives. In additional to operations decisions, these decision have risk. Government regulations, including financial, environmental and labor have risk implications on these decisions. So, these operational decisions have a huge impact on a company’s operations and even small improvements have outsized effects on a company’s performance and risk profile.
Corporations use Business Decision Management (BDM) to identify, catalog, model and improve operational decisions. Traditionally companies that have complex, rules-intensive operations are already using business decision management. These include banking, finance, insurance, and health care. Yet, other industries should, (and are) adopt decision management care methods. These include the sectors of energy, utilities automotive and transportation.
Business analysts and subject matter experts identify business decisions through the analysis of business objectives, process models and use cases. In addition, modeling the properties of the decisions is key. This describes questions, input data, logic, external mandates (authorities) and business knowledge. The objective of the modeling is for all analysts, subject area experts and managers to create a shared understanding of the compliance decisions. One key enabler of BDM is the new open, standard notation ratified by the object management group (OMG): the Decision Model and Notation (DMN). This specification has been developed by the leading consulting and software business rules vendors common notation that is readily understandable by all business users. DMN creates a standardized bridge for the gap between the business decision design and decision implementation.” Many software vendors have adopted DMN.
The goal of BDM is for the decisions to become first class citizens amongst an institution’s resources—that is: an asset for the institution to manage just like capital, processes and intellectual property. Since poor performance and non-compliance can be a costly issue, clear, accurate decision making is most certainly a vital asset. As a result, organizations are empowered to control, manage, automate and improve their critical, repeatable decisions. Precisely modeled business decisions create specific performance and compliance needs to which the responding process must conform. As a result, BDM enables the development of simpler, smarter, and more agile business processes.
Companies wishing to learn more about business decision management can read about it here: http://www.signavio.com/usecases/decision-management/

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Lloyd Dugan

Lloyd Dugan is a widely recognized thought leader in the development and use of leading modeling languages, methodologies, and tools, covering from the level of EA and BA down through BPM, Case Management, and SOA. He specializes in the use of standard languages for describing business processes, systems, and services, particularly BPMN, CMMN, and DMN from the OMG. He has developed and delivered BPMN 2.0 training to the U.S. Department of Defense and large consultancies. He has nearly 30 years of experience with public and private sector clients, and has an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He is an OMG-Certified Expert in BPM (OCEB) – Fundamental, a member of the Workflow Management Coalition and its BPSim Working Group, a member of the OMG’s BPMN Model Interchange Working Group (MIWG), and a Contributing Member (author), Meta Modeling and BPM-BA Alignment Collaboration Teams Member, and Advisory Board Member of the Business Architecture Guild. He is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences on BPM, BPMN, Case Management, SOA, and BA. He is a published author or co-author on BPM, BPMN, and BA. He serves as the Chief Architect for Business Process Management, Inc. (see www.bpm.com), for whom he delivers BPM-related training and client advisory services on BPM-related matters and technologies.

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In my limited practice and teaching of DMN as an adjunct language to BPMN, I have found DMN to be both powerful and expressive (though in a rather verbose way). Together with BPMN and CMMN, we now have robust and sophisticated modeling languages for describing different aspects of the operational behaviors exhibited by a business. DMN is most appropriate for abstracting complex decision logic into a singular process flow node like a Business Rule Task in BPMN or a Decision Task (a far better name) in CMMN that calls to the thing that actually executes the decision logic. This usage should lead to the replacement of otherwise clustered control flow redirection moments in a process model rather than let the decision logic be realized through the process model’s structure. Examples of this include highly computational or algorithmic logic, which one would find in a variety of industry domains.

To learn how to use it, I recommend the DMN specification itself (see http://www.omg.org/spec/DMN/), which is not as narratively dense or a challenge to read as its peer languages. However, it lacks the historical context from which decision modeling has emerged. Previously lumped together with business rules modeling, there are the long-standing concepts of Fact Type and Fact Type Model, which perhaps have been best presented by the well known business rules guru, Ron Ross (see http://www.brcommunity.com/b525.php). Even though DMN does not use the term Fact Type, I do not believe that there is much daylight between this term and what one would otherwise call Decision (as output data) and Input (as input data) in DMN. Of course, there is now a “methods and style” treatment of DMN from BPMN guru Bruce Silver (see http://www.amazon.com/DMN-Method-Style-Practitioners-Decision/dp/0982368151/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8), which I have not yet had the pleasure of reading (one of my summer projects) but am confident provides the desired guidance. However, though but one means of implementing decision logic modeled in DMN (and the one with the best pedigree), Decision Tables can be tricky to do and to understand. In my opinion, a much more intuitive and satisfying examination of the use of such constructs is presented in a predecessor to DMN, known as The Decision Model or TDM (see http://www.amazon.com/The-Decision-Model-Technology-Management/dp/1420082817), which uses slightly different terms for many of the same concepts presented in DMN. Finally, I would recommend finding and using a modeling tool (such as that from Trisotech or Signavio) that supports the DMN standard along with the ability to link it with a BPMN model and/or CMMN model – then practice!

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Marlon Dumas

Marlon Dumas is Professor of Software Engineering at University of Tartu, Estonia where he leads a team of 15 researchers focused on Business Process Management (BPM). Previously, he was faculty member at
Queensland University of Technology and visiting researcher at SAP Research, Australia, where he led several BPM-related applied research projects. Prof. Dumas has provided consultancy and training to a dozen organizations in Australia and the Baltics. He is co-inventor of six
granted US/EU patents in the field of BPM and co-author of the textbook “Fundamentals of Business Process Management”, now used in more than 100 universities worldwide.

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In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

DMN is relevant in all companies that run business processes with complex decisions. There are some industry sectors where this is clearly the case, like in the financial and insurance sectors, in the logistics sector, in the healthcare sector, in the legal sector, and definitely in the government sector where application-to-approval processes are full of complex decisions with high impact on people’s life.
Think for example of decisions that determine how much social aid a given family receives or decisions taken in clinical pathways, which may have an impact both on people’s life as well as on cost-efficiency. Beyond these sectors, DMN is relevant in sales processes involving complex pricing models or in issue-to-resolution processes driven by large knowledge bases, for example in the e-commerce and telco sectors.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

The first step is to identify and scope your decisions and treat them as first-class citizens, in the same way as you identify and scope your business processes when you introduce process-thinking in an organization. Then you should prioritize your decisions in terms of their impact to the business, and in terms of how dysfunctional they currently are, e.g. how many exceptions they generate that could be prevented or reduced if the decisions were explicitly managed.
This latter step will force you to define performance measures for your decisions, such as their defect rate or their cost-efficiency. You can then pick the decisions that are highly dysfunctional and that have a high impact on the business, capture them in DMN, analyze and redesign these decisions, and perhaps as importantly, establish a monitoring system to track the performance of each critical decision.

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Alan Fish

Dr Alan N Fish is Principal Consultant in Decision Solutions with FICO, having over 30 years’ experience in the support, automation and optimisation of organisational decisions. He invented the “Decision Requirements Diagram” (DRD) which exposes the structure of a domain of decision-making, and developed Decision Requirements Analysis (DRA): a methodology for building and using such decision models. He is the author of “Knowledge Automation: How To Implement Decision Management in Business Processes” (Wiley), and co-author of the OMG specification Decision Model and Notation (DMN).

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In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

You should use DMN whenever you want to specify the structure of some operational decision-making. Just as BPMN models repeatable processes by breaking them down into sequences of activities drawn as a process flow, DMN models repeatable decision-making (human or automated) by breaking it down into a network of interrelated decisions which can be drawn as a Decision Requirements Diagram (DRD).
This is particularly important in industries which use knowledge workers, especially the financial sector (e.g. banking, credit, insurance, healthcare) where decision-making must be fair, accurate and compliant with legislation, but it’s hard to think of any industry which does not involve some operational decision-making. In a process automation project, DMN can be used to specify the decision-making to be automated and map it to activities in BPMN models of the process. This allows you to define the precise relationship between those decisions which should be automated and those to be made by human case workers.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

The first step should always be to carry out a Decision Requirements Analysis Workshop (DRAW). This is a structured workshop using simple top-down decomposition, involving a few days’ participation from your process owners and subject-matter experts, and led by a business analyst. This small investment will result in DRDs showing the structure of the domain of decision-making and identifying all the information required for it: the data which must be collected by the process, and the organisational business knowledge – business rules, analytic models and calculations – which must be applied to the data to make the necessary decisions.
These high-level requirements can then be used:
• to specify the scope of any subsequent implementation project, determine feasibility, and estimate costs
• to plan the project, partitioning the DRDs into increments of functionality
• to guide and constrain the process of business rule discovery
• to provide context for analytic model development
• to specify the system interfaces and internal structure of decision services
• to identify the human interfaces required to maintain the business knowledge over time.
A DMN decision model spans three levels of detail – the DRD, decision tables, and decision logic – so developing it is a process of gradually adding detail. Once fully specified, a DMN model is executable. Most modelling tools today have some limitations (check their “conformance level” to the DMN specification), but soon it will be common practice to specify your complete decision model in DMN, working top-down, then deploy it directly to the execution architecture as a decision service to be consumed by your BPMS.

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Larry Goldberg

Larry Goldberg is the evangelist for Sapiens DECISION, and as a member of the senior management team is responsible for all products in the Sapiens Decision company. He was Co-founder and Managing Partner of Knowledge Partners International LLC, which was acquired by Sapiens Decision, and has over forty years of experience in building technology based companies on four continents. Commercial applications in which he played a primary architectural role include such diverse domains as healthcare, supply chain, property & casualty insurance, financial services and enterprise modeling tools. He has been the business lead and/or business sponsor on many major projects in both the public and private sector, and is a trusted adviser to senior executives from major corporations.

Larry is a leading international authority on business requirements: he is the co-author of the best-selling book “The Decision Model: A Business Logic Framework Linking Business and Technology” (Auerbach, New York 2009), and was co-editor of “The Business Rule Revolution” (HappyAbout.info 2007). He joins Barbara von Halle in writing the monthly Business Decision Management column in www.ModernAnalyst.com and the quarterly column in www.Tdan.com.

In addition Larry can be heard on the webinar series for the IT Product Metrics & Productivity Institute (www.itmpi.org), and at many conferences and industry events around the world. His writings can also be found in industry publications such as www.BPtrends.com and www.RequirementsNetwork.com.

With his co-inventor, Barbara von Halle, he is the patent holder of The Decision Model, can be found at www.SapiensDecision.com

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In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

The range of industries that BPM professionals should use DMN are extremely broad because, like BPMN, DMN is essentially a notation; wherever BPMN is used, we would expect there to be supporting logic modeled in DMN. A strong contender for the use of DMN also lies in highly regulated domain because the logic that is applied to processes in such fields is particular complex and there is a strong need for that to be transparent and we governed. Because of the sea changes in the financial services market resulting from the global financial crisis of 2008/9, we are seeing a lot of DMN use in this area, but in reality it is also perfectly applicable in healthcare, telecom, supply chain, and many other similar areas.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

DMN, like any modeling approach, requires a certain rigor, otherwise it will prove to be wasteful and will have a very short shelf life. So the first step is to really develop a deep understanding of the modeling approach. Pick a vendor or consultant with a demonstrated track record of decision management implementation, and with solid methodology, and make sure the target of the engagement is to mentor your in-house skills, not to perpetuate a vendor relationship. Start small, demonstrate success in a project of limited scope that has real impact on the business, and keep iterating on an ever expanding scope, tracking carefully the progress and value, and demonstrate self-reliance as the work progresses. Understand the maturity you wish to reach using a maturity model, and measure you progress frequently against that model.

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Gary Hallmark

Gary is a software architect of Oracle’s Process Cloud and Decision Modeling Services .
He is leading development of a Decision Modeling product based on OMG DMN. Invented DMN FEEL language. Co-chaired DMN standards committee, and co-authored the standard.

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In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

Many business processes are all about approvals. We have so many examples – loan approval, expense approval, travel approval, document approval – that I often joke that we should have named our latest BPMN-based cloud product ‘Oracle Approval Cloud’ instead of ‘Oracle Process Cloud’. BPMN is great at showing the steps in such a process, but it is terrible at explaining the reason something gets approved or rejected. DMN excels at diagramming how approval decisions are composed from smaller decisions about risk, affordability, and so on. DMN also excels at automating the logic behind the decisions as decision tables and other user-friendly tabular expressions. DMN should be used wherever decisions need to be documented, improved, and automated.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

DMN-oriented books, training, and software are now coming to market. Check out expert authors including Bruce Silver, James Taylor, Alan Fish, and Jan Vanthienen. Some of these authors also offer training and consulting services. Visit dmcommunity.org for more information, news, and help about decision modeling.

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Juergen Pitschke

Juergen Pitschke is Partner and Managing Director at Process Renewal Group Deutschland.
Juergen has more than 25 years industrial experience about enterprise modelling and the realization of Business and IT Architectures. He is recognized for his deep knowledge and the systematic use of visual standard notations and of different frameworks für the design of an Enterpirse Architecture. His knowledge is often sought in the field of Business Process Management and Decision Management.
His focus are model-based approaches for enterprise design and their practical use. Clients value his abilities to explain concepts, to help teams to adopt and successfully apply such methods, and to guide projects successfully.
He is author of the book “Unternehmensmodellierung für die Praxis”. He translated the Business Process Manifesto, the Decision Management Manifesto, and the RuleSpeak® – approach into German.
His customers include companies as Kuehne+Nagel (AG & Co.) KG, Boehler Edelstahl or organizations like the Federal Office of Police in Switzerland.

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In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

Decision Management is very valuable for all industries, not only for compliance issue. All service-oriented industries have decision intense processes. Look for you KPIs. In the most cases you can influence the KPIs through (good) operative decision.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

I think you need at least a basic understanding of your process before looking into your decisions. Both belong together. Check your processes – where are they to complicated or incomplete? Maybe the reason are hidden or unclear decisions. Prioritize the decisions you want to analyze.
First understand the concepts of Business Decision Management, than look into the DMN notation. Start with the content, not with the standard. Grow from this. Especially predictive decisions need a change in thinking.

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Mihail Popov

Mihail works as a systems engineer for the MITRE Corporation, specializing in model-based engineering techniques and tools with focus on executable business and system models. Before MITRE, worked as a software developer and systems architect for information technology solutions in the financial services, hospitality, and entertainment sectors. Lives in the Washington Metro DC area with his wife and daughters.

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In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

During my career as a software and systems engineer and architect, serving clients in the financial and insurance business, I have seen many areas that can benefit from Decision Modeling techniques. Through my more recent work at MITRE, I continue to see this trend continue with our sponsors in the Federal Government. I believe that there are excellent opportunities to apply decision models to address a multitude of diverse problems ranging from tax accounting to national security and everything in-between. The DMN specification has the potential to accelerate the adoption of Decision Modeling at a much broader scale, due to increased awareness and better tool capabilities and interoperability. My hope is that Decision Modeling and DMN will become just as popular as Business Process Modeling and BPMN have become in recent years.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

Understanding what Decision Modeling is about at a high-level is simple: take a training, read a book, or invite an expert to demonstrate Decision Modeling. For many stakeholders, this is all that is needed so they understand the value Decision Modeling may have for their organizations. Becoming an expert in decision modeling takes practice, just like becoming a good database modeler or software designer do. Depending on the role a stakeholder plays related to Decision Modeling the necessary steps to become familiar with it are different. For business analysts and others who need to understand information in decision models, a simple few hours of training is all that is needed to learn how to navigate decision models created by others. For analysts and modelers who create the decision models, a more in-depth training program is needed to learn the principles of Decision Modeling and to become experts in their chosen tools. Developers of Decision Modeling tools must focus on the relationships and elements within decision models and learn as much of the DMN specification as needed to ensure the desired level of conformance with the specification and proper implementation of it in their tools.

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Tobias Rausch

Tobias Rausch is the Product Manager at BOC Group for the ADONIS Business Process Management Toolkit as part of BOC’s Management Office suite. Previously Tobias has been working for the BOC offices in Austria and Ireland and his role as a Senior Consultant offered him the opportunity to manage and be part of (large-scale) projects in different industries. His main fields of expertise are in introducing and implementing BPM in organisations, approaches for process-driven requirements definition and software development and in risk management scenarios.

He co-authored the chapter “BPMN for Business Professionals: Making BPMN 2.0 Fit for Full Business Use” in “BPMN 2.0 Handbook Second Edition“.

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Twitter: @BOC_Group

In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

Decision Management and Modelling (and therefore also DMN) can be of relevance for all industries. Typical rules are an important aspect of the requirements analysis in projects focusing on application development and process execution support.
From my personal experience the definition and design of business rules, in these type of projects, as the basis for decision making is also long-lived practice. Any business analyst will have done decision tables, pseudo-code for rules and the like during a requirements analysis where the results served as an input for implementation (and testing etc.). Such projects are not limited to any industry, but typically focus on domains and processes with high volume, good predictability, a good potential for automation (at least of parts), a certain degree of complexity and need for “integrated solutions” with proper audit trails.
While therefore DMN is to some degree “old wine in new skins” it can help these efforts as it summarises and formalises different aspects and provides a framework for decision modelling as well as a defined notation.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

Every organisation needs to understand where and how business critical decisions are made. Therefore they need to understand their business processes and ideally have a risk management established (based on a documented internal control system).
Important decisions and business rules, supported by IT systems or not, should be properly documented. In case an organisation lacks such documentation, DMN is a valid option providing a standardised model and notation. However a clear scope, governance mechanisms and organisational responsibilities need to be defined to make sure the documentation is kept up-to-date. It also needs to be reflected to what level of detail a documentation is required and if all concepts of DMN are really needed.
For organisations already possessing documentation for decision/rule management, they need to evaluate if DMN provides advantages compared to their current approach.
In any case, if an organisation is interested in applying DMN, we recommend to apply it in a small, but representative pilot environment. Several of our customers have followed this approach by evaluating the DMN extension for ADONIS (which is provided as an integrated and well-defined extension to our BPMN “fit for business” approach). Based on the results of the pilot, their individual goals and project scope as well as a cost/benefit analysis the decisions about next steps have been taken.

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Ronald G. Ross

Ronald G. Ross is Principal and Co-Founder of Business Rule Solutions, LLC (BRS), where he actively develops and applies the BABusinessSpeak methodology including RuleSpeak®, DecisionSpeak, and ConceptSpeak. Ron consults to companies worldwide through BRS.
Ron is recognized internationally as the “father of business rules.” He is the author of ten professional books including the groundbreaking first book on business rules The Business Rule Book in 1994. His newest are:
• Building Business Solutions: Business Analysis with Business Rules (2nd edition) with Gladys S.W. Lam (2015, An IIBA® Sponsored Handbook).
• Business Rule Concepts: Getting to the Point of Knowledge (4th edition, 2013).
Ron serves as Executive Editor of BRCommunity.com and its flagship publication, Business Rules Journal. He is a sought-after speaker at conferences world-wide. More than 50,000 people have heard him speak; many more have attended his seminars and read his books.
Ron has served as Chair of the annual International Business Rules & Decisions Forum conference since 1997, now part of the Building Business Capability (BBC) conference. He was a charter member of the Business Rules Group (BRG) in the 1980s, and an editor of its Business Motivation Model (BMM) standard and the Business Rules Manifesto. He is active in OMG standards development, with core involvement in SBVR. He was also a contributor to the IIBA’s BABOK v3.

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Before answering those questions, it might be worth a second to probe more directly. Can anyone think of a business process that doesn’t include some juncture at which an operational business decision is made? By ‘operational business decision’ I mean a repetitive choice between possible outcomes or results. Want consistency of results from the process for the customer experience? You’d be well-advised to model the decision.
Processes today get their business rules, including those applied in making decisions, all entangled with the ‘flow’ of the process. The result? Unagile, high complex processes. Not what the business wants any more (if ever).
What’s the solution? Model the question the decision addresses. Decompose it down to its roots, where you will find decision rules, often in the form of decision tables.
DMN is a standard that addresses one way of modeling decisions. It fits well with vendors’ rule-engine platforms. What the world of business analysts really needs is a proper mindset that ‘gets’ the importance of separating business rules, including decision rules, from process flow (and other business analysis artifacts). Treat them as a first-class citizen of the requirements world. That’s unfortunately still missing in a great many cases.

In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

From an industry stand-point, DMN is receiving the most attention in financial and insurance applications. That’s probably simply because their products are intangible, and more or less obviously rule-based. But as I said, we haven’t really seen any business process in any industry sector that at some juncture doesn’t need to make a selection between possible alternative results or outcomes based on circumstances (e.g., the particulars of the customer, the product, the jurisdiction, the timing, the business transaction, etc., etc.). It’s just common sense.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

Understand the problem from a business point of view, not a technology or standards perspective. Keep yourselves out of the technical weeds so you can communicate effectively with business stakeholders. Here’s a good way to get started: DecisionSpeak (free on http://www.brsolutions.com/b_ipspeakprimers.php).

Gladys S.W. Lam

Gladys S.W. Lam is Principal of Business Rule Solutions, the most recognized company world-wide in business rules and decision engineering. BRS provides consulting services, methodology, training and publications. Ms. Lam is co-creator of BABusinessSpeak, the BRS methodology for business analysis with business rules. BABusinessSpeak is used by companies world-wide. She is co-founder of BRCommunity.com, a vertical community for professionals and home of the Business Rules Journal.

Ms. Lam actively consults. She is widely known for her lively, pragmatic style and world-class project management skills. She speaks internationally at conferences and other professional events. She is also Executive Director of the Building Business Capability (BBC) Conference, the official conference of the IIBA®.

Ms. Lam is a world-renowned expert on business project management, having managed numerous projects that focus on the large-scale capture, analysis and management of business rules. She advises senior management of large companies on organizational issues and on business solutions to business problems. She has extensive experience in related areas, including BPM, structured business strategy, and managing and implementing information systems.

Ms. Lam is most recognized for her ability to identify the source of business issues, and for her effectiveness in developing pragmatic approaches to resolve them. She has gained a world-class reputation for fostering positive professional relationships with principals and support staff in projects.

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Twitter: @GladysLam

The only thing I like to add is that the ‘mindset’ Ron is talking about is easy to learn once business analysts and process analysts first understand decision and rules from a business perspective. As Ron said, which process does not have rules and decisions? Without rules guiding a process, you will have ciaos. Without well defined decision guiding a process, you will have inconsistent results. Once that is understood, look first at how these rules and decisions can be externalized from a business perspective. Then think of implementation. IT professionals tend to like DMN because it aligns with many rules engine and decision management platforms.

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Tim Stephenson

Tim has many years experience in Business Process software and has contributed to a number of industry standards including XPDL, BPSim and DMN across multiple versions. In both Global 500 companies and brand new startups Tim has worked to bring agility and competitive advantage through application of model-driven software support for both human and machine processes and decisions. Currently Tim is COO of Omny Link, a cloud CRM provider. http://omny.link.

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In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

At one level you could say ‘any industry that makes decisions’!
More specifically, I think the arguments that have long applied to business process and BPMN apply here too. If you have high volumes then automation will be beneficial to reduce costs, in particular staff time taken in completing tasks which could be automated with BPM. At the other end of the scale where volumes are small, if the industry is highly regulated or the consequences of mistakes very high then well documented decisions will benefit accuracy and transparency.
Either way it is our view that BPM is part of the push towards greater automation of business processes, giving increased efficiencies and economies of scale.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

I certainly believe it’s beneficial to start at the top and get a broad understanding of the problem space before driving into details in a subset of areas. DMN can represent this problem space with no more complexity than a ‘bag’ of named decisions analogous to a number of sticky notes on a white board. At this level you’re looking to eliminate overlapping concepts and define a common set of terms (nouns) that the decision logic will later operate on. All the typical discovery methodologies apply, but clearly with DMN the type of understanding needed is different to BPMN.
Furthermore you are also trying to develop something which can be adapted and optimised over time, so the benefit of DMN is not just in the time saving, but also in the ease at which you can adjust parameters to affect decisions.

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James Taylor

James is a leading expert in decision management and in the development of Decision Management Systems. Experienced working with business rules, predictive analytics and other decisioning technologies to improve operational systems. Published author – Decision Management Systems (IBM Press), Smart (Enough) Systems (Prentice Hall) – strategy consultant, writer and speaker.

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In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

Almost any industry can have projects that will benefit from using DMN – the trick is how to identify a process that will benefit. I am working on a new book, Real-World Decision Modeling with DMN, with Jan Purchase and have actually just been writing on this topic. Processes that focus on an organization’s customers, on managing risk or on fraud detection and prevention are a good place to start. If those processes involve high transaction volumes or real-time responses even better. Similarly if there is significant business complexity, regulatory compliance or frequent change in a process then that’s a good sign too. All of these suggest that there are repeatable, non-trivial, decisions that add business value in these processes.
Identifying these decisions and modeling them with DMN (instead of not modeling them or trying to use BPMN to model them) will make the process simpler, smarter and more agile. Simpler because externalizing decisions reduces process complexity by eliminating gateways and other process elements used to model the decision. Smarter because business rules and analytic technologies can be more effectively applied once the decisions are known and understood. More agile because the decision and process can be changed independently and because a DMN decision model allows you to understand and change decision-making more safely and rapidly.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

Begin with the decision in mind!
The most important thing is to focus on decisions explicitly as a separate thing. Decisions are not subordinate to processes but their peers. Decision-making should not be wrapped into processes or embedded in system logic but should be modeled and managed as separate decision services. Business rules should not be captured directly, but in the context of a well understood decision. Decision modeling with DMN is an approachable, iterative technique that allows decisions to be quickly modeled and effectively managed. But you have to focus first on the decisions – on the business questions you are going to answer – and sustain that decision focus as you build the model. It’s not a process, it’s a decision.

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Jan Vanthienen

Jan Vanthienen is professor of information management at the Business Information Systems Group of KU Leuven (Belgium), where he is teaching and researching on business rules, processes and decisions. The area of business rules modeling, validation and verification, and decision modeling in the context of business process modeling has been his major area of research and expertise for many years. Jan is also a recipient of an IBM Faculty Award, the Belgian Francqui Chair at FUNDP, a Best Paper award at The International RuleML Symposium and a Best Paper Nomination at the Fourth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems.

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In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

If you are using BPM(N), you should also consider using DMN. It will simplify your processes, by unraveling the decision logic, and it will allow you to focus on the relationship between decisions.
If you are not using BPMN, maybe because your processes are rather knowledge-intensive, case-based or hard to capture in a rigid flow, you should certainly consider DMN and model the decision knowledge.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

The first steps to start using decision management might involve bringing together some decision rules and organizing them in a decision model, which is then checked for completeness and consistency. But soon you will learn how to obtain consistency and completeness by design.
Besides these obvious advantages, DMN is much more than that. It is not just about the one big decision to be taken. The purpose of a decision model may look like deciding the outcome for a given (complete) set of input values. E.g. John is a customer with these and these data, how much discount does John get on a specific order? DMN contains the full decision logic and can therefore answer many other questions, e.g.: – with the available inputs, what do I already know? – What does John have to change in his order to obtain more discount? – What is the maximum discount John can obtain in his situation? – etc. The model of the decision does not dictate one specific execution for one question only.

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Mathias Weske

Professor Dr. Mathias Weske is chair of the business process technology research group at Hasso Plattner Institute of IT Systems Engineering at the University of Potsdam, Germany. The research group aims at addressing real-world BPM problems with formal approaches and engineering useful prototypes. His research focuses on the engineering of process oriented information systems, decision management, and event handling. In addition to running the BPM Academic Initiative bpmai.org with colleagues from academia and Signavio, the BPT research group has a track record in engineered prototypes with a significant impact on research, including projects like Oryx and jBPT. Dr. Weske is author of the first textbook on business process management and he held the first massive open online course on the topic in 2013. He on the Editorial Board of Springer’s Distributed and Parallel Databases journal and a founding member of the steering committee of the BPM conference series.

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In which industries and projects BPM professionals should consider using DMN?

DMN allows us to represent decision logic in a way that it can be understood by people, for instance, by using decision tables. At the same time, decision logic can be understood by machines, so that decisions can be taken in a precise, unambiguous, and repeatable manner. Therefore, domains in which operational decisions play an important role in the daily business are ideal candidates. Especially if decisions are subject to frequent change. We witness this situation in finance, where regulation plays an increasingly important role and where policies set by regulatory authorities are subject to change. Decision management also helps in auditing, since we can document precisely which decisions have been taken and, by referencing the decision logic, how exactly decisions have been taken. This makes decision management an ideal tool in finance. A similar argumentation holds for the insurance domain, so that finance and insurance are among the prime candidates for decision management.

What should be the first (and next) steps of someone who wants to start using decision management with DMN in practice?

Since decision management with DMN is a novel approach, there is no generally agreed methodology on how to introduce decision management in companies. Due to the diversity and complexity of decision management challenges, it’s actually hard to imagine that a single methodology will fit all needs. For companies which defined their business operations using business processes, for instance represented in BPMN, however, the following procedure might be useful: Start with the business process models, investigate decision points in the process and also process activities that are responsible for taking the decision. Next look at the data objects used by these activities. These data objects are inputs to the decision, and the process also shows the expected outcomes. These make an excellent start to define the decision logic, especially if a suitable tool for representing processes and decisions is in place, like, for instance, the Signavio system. Since many companies in finance and insurance have already represented their business processes properly, this procedure could be well applicable in these domains.

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The post Decision Management with DMN in practice first appeared on BPM Tips.